KTBB News, Weather, Talk

AUSTIN – KXAN reports that despite Texas’ economic dependence on water and the infrastructure that moves it, a new report finds the state faces a long-term water supply deficit. The report by the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute and commissioned by Texas 2036, said the state is economically vulnerable should a severe drought occur. It estimates that if a years-long drought similar to that of the 1950s happened, then as soon as 2030 Texas will endure $160 billion in annual GDP losses, 800,000 jobs lost, and an exodus of hundreds of thousands of people leaving for other states. The report finds a drought would also impact the state’s ability to generate energy, costing millions and perhaps billions in economic damages per day.

“It creates a real possibility of having rolling blackouts and electrical outages that are sustained over time,” said Jeremy Mazur, Texas 2036 Director of Infrastructure and Natural Resources Policy. Texas 2036 is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization focused on shaping Texas’ future. The report found Texas’ water woes could be exacerbated by infrastructure issues as well. It said that barring significant infrastructure investments, deteriorating water and wastewater systems will contribute to nearly $320 billion in GDP losses, “an amount equal to the size of the state’s current two-year budget.” The report quantifies the water supply deficit as nearly 6.9 million acre-feet of water by the year 2070, enough water to supply as many as 20.7 million homes for a year. It said over the next 50 years the state will need to invest $59 billion in new water supplies, $74 billion in fixing deteriorating water systems, and $21 billion in fixing broken wastewater systems.

TEXAS BORDER – The Dallas Morning News reports Texas unveiled its newly acquired border ranch — offered as the site of detention facilities to help the Trump administration with proposed mass deportations — and Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said Tuesday the state is looking to identify additional land to aid the federal effort. The General Land Office has more than 13 million acres of land under its jurisdiction, Buckingham said. “If the Trump administration thinks it’ll be helpful, we want to be good partners with them,” she said. The effort, known as the Jocelyn Initiative, is named for Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old Houston girl who was killed in June. Two Venezuelan immigrants who were in the country illegally have been charged with murder and sexual assault.

“We will continue to fight to ensure that our state remains a beacon of hope, justice and dignity for all who call Texas home,” Buckingham said. In an interview with The Dallas Morning News, Buckingham said her agency is not looking to buy additional land and added she wants to be supportive of the incoming Trump administration. Buckingham, a former state senator whose agency manages state land, introduced the news media to the 1,402-acre ranch purchased in October for $3.82 million, according to a purchasing agreement obtained by The News. She stood before a portion of border wall the state is building on the property. Buckingham said her agency bought the ranch after the previous owner refused to let the state build its border wall on the property. Buckingham criticized the former landowner Tuesday, saying her decision to block the border wall contributed to drug trafficking and illegal crossings into Texas. Andrea Kate Sheerin, who sold the ranch to the state, declined to comment when reached via text message Tuesday morning.

NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart’s sweeping rollback of its diversity policies is the strongest indication yet of a profound shift taking hold at U.S. companies that are re-evaluating the legal and political risks associated with bold programs to bolster historically underrepresented groups.

The changes announced by the world’s biggest retailer on Monday followed a string of legal victories by conservative groups that have filed an onslaught of lawsuits challenging corporate and federal programs aimed at elevating minority and women-owned businesses and employees.

The retreat from such programs crystalized with the election of former President Donald Trump, whose administration is certain to make dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion programs a priority. Trump’s incoming deputy chief of policy will be his former adviser Stephen Miller, who leads a group called America First Legal that has aggressively challenged corporate DEI policies.

“There has been a lot of reassessment of risk looking at programs that could be deemed to constitute reverse discrimination,” said Allan Schweyer, principal researcher at the Human Capital Center at the Conference Board.

“This is another domino to fall and it is a rather large domino,” he added.

Among other changes, Walmart said it will no longer give priority treatment to suppliers owned by women or minorities. The company also will not renew a five-year commitment for a racial equity center set up in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd. And it pulled out of a prominent gay rights index.

Schweyer said the biggest trigger for companies making such changes is simply a reassessment of their legal risk exposure, which began after U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June 2023 that ended affirmative action in college admissions. Since then, conservative groups using similar arguments have secured court victories against various diversity programs, especially those that steer contracts to minority or women-owned businesses.

Most recently, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty won a victory in a case against the U.S. Department of Transportation over its use of a program that gives priority to minority-owned businesses when it awards contracts.

Companies are seeing a big legal risk in continuing with DEI efforts, said Dan Lennington, a deputy counsel at the institute. His organization says it has identified more than 60 programs in the federal government that it considers discriminatory, he said.

“We have a legal landscape within the entire federal government, all three branches — the U.S. Supreme Court, the Congress and the President — are all now firmly pointed in the direction towards equality of individuals and individualized treatment of all Americans, instead of diversity, equity and inclusion treating people as members of racial groups,” Lennington said.

The Trump administration is also likely to take direct aim at DEI initiatives through executive orders and other policies that affect private companies, especially federal contractors.

“The impact of the election on DEI policies is huge. It can’t be overstated,” said Jason Schwartz, co-chair of the Labor & Employment Practice Group at law firm Gibson Dunn.

With Miller returning to the White House, rolling back DEI initiatives is likely to be a priority, Schwartz said.

“Companies are trying to strike the right balance to make clear they’ve got an inclusive workplace where everyone is welcome, and they want to get the best talent, while at the same time trying not to alienate various parts of their employees and customer base who might feel one way or the other. It’s a virtually impossible dilemma,” Schwartz said.

Marc Morial, CEO of the National Urban League, a civil rights group that has worked with Walmart on diversity and inclusion efforts in the past, called the company’s pullback from DEI “stunning” and “unexpected.”

“This is inconsistent with the Walmart I know,” said Morial, who argued that DEI policies are how organizations ensure compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and any suggestion of favoritism or preferential treatment “is really defamatory against what DEI represents.”

He said that Walmart would see “a strong message” to the decision but that civil rights leaders “are first very interested in dialogue” with Walmart executives.

A recent survey by Pew Research Center showed that workers are divided on the merits of DEI policies. While still broadly popular, the share of workers who said focusing on workplace diversity was mostly a good thing fell to 52% in the October survey, compared to 56% in a similar survey in February 2023. Rachel Minkin, a research associate at Pew, called it a small but significant shift in short amount of time.

There will be more companies pulling back from their DEI policies, but it likely won’t be a retreat across the board, said David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at New York University.

“There are vastly more companies that are sticking with DEI,” Glasgow said. “The only reason you don’t hear about it is most of them are doing it by stealth. They’re putting their heads down and doing DEI work and hoping not to attract attention.”

Glasgow advises organizations to stick to their own core values, because attitudes toward the topic can change quickly in the span of four years.

“It’s going to leave them looking a little bit weak if there’s a kind of flip-flopping, depending on whichever direction the political winds are blowing,” he said.

One reason DEI programs exist is because without those programs, companies may be vulnerable to lawsuits for traditional discrimination. “Really think carefully about the risks in all directions on this topic,” Glasgow said.

Walmart confirmed will no longer consider race and gender as a litmus test to improve diversity when it offers supplier contracts. Walmart says its U.S. businesses sourced more than $13 billion in goods and services from diverse suppliers in fiscal year 2024, including businesses owned by minorities, women and veterans.

It was unclear how its relationships with such business would change going forward. Organizations that have partnered with Walmart on its diversity initiatives offered a cautious response.

The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, a non-profit that last year named Walmart one of America’s top corporation for women-owned enterprises, said it was still evaluating the impact of Walmart’s announcement.

Pamela Prince-Eason, the president and CEO of the organization, said she hoped Walmart’s need to cater to its diverse customer base will continue to drive contracts to women-owned suppliers even if the company has no explicit dollar goals.

“I suspect Walmart will continue to have one of the most inclusive supply chains in the World,” Prince-Eason wrote. “Any retailer’s ability to serve the communities they operate in will continue to value understanding their customers, (many of which are women), in order to better provide products and services desired and no one understands customers better than Walmart.”

Walmart’s announcement came after the company spoke directly with conservative political commentator and activist Robby Starbuck, who has been going after corporate DEI policies, calling out individual companies on the social media platform X. Several of those companies have subsequently announced that they are pulling back their initiatives, including Ford, Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s and Tractor Supply.

Walmart confirmed to The Associated Press that it will better monitor its third-party marketplace items to make sure they don’t feature sexual and transgender products aimed at minors. The company also will stop participating in the Human Rights Campaign’s annual benchmark index that measures workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees.

A Walmart spokesperson added that some of the changes were already in progress and not as a result of conversations that it had with Starbuck.

RaShawn “Shawnie” Hawkins, senior director of the HRC Foundation’s Workplace Equality Program, said companies that “abandon” their commitments workplace inclusion policies “are shirking their responsibility to their employees, consumers, and shareholders.” She said the buying power of LGBTQ customers is powerful and noted that the index will have record participation of more than 1,400 companies in 2025.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a Monday evening announcement, President-elect Donald Trump railed against Mexico and Canada, accusing them of allowing thousands of people to enter the U.S.

Hitting a familiar theme from the campaign trail and his first term in office, Trump portrayed the country’s borders as insecure and immigrants as contributing to crime and the fentanyl crisis. In an announcement that could have stark repercussions, he threatened to impose 25% tariffs on everything coming into the country from those two countries.

Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric has resonated with voters concerned about immigration and crime. Yet there’s more to the story than Trump’s short statement suggested.

A look at what the numbers and studies say about border crossings, fentanyl smuggling and whether there’s a connection between immigration and crime:

Border crossings

The number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border is a key metric watched intensely by both Republicans and Democrats.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, releases monthly statistics that track everything from drug seizures to cross-border trade. One of the metrics tracked is the number of Border Patrol arrests or encounters each month with people entering the country between the official border crossings — known as the ports of entry.

The vast majority of those arrests happen at the southern border.

Those numbers have actually been falling this year under the Biden administration. The Border Patrol made 56,530 arrests in October, which is about a four-year low.

It hasn’t always been like that. The Biden administration struggled to bring down the growing number of migrants coming to the southern border. A little less than a year ago, in December 2023, the Border Patrol made about a quarter of a million arrests along the southern border — an all-time high. Cross-border trade was damaged as border agents were reassigned to help process migrants and train traffic was temporarily shut down.

Since then, the numbers of people encountered at the southern border have dropped and stayed down through a combination of stricter enforcement on the Mexican side and asylum restrictions announced earlier this year by the Biden administration.

Republicans put a caveat on those numbers.

They have frequently accused the Biden administration of using an app called CBP One to let hundreds of thousands of people into the country who otherwise wouldn’t be allowed in. They’ve described the program where 1,450 people a day can schedule an appointment to come into the U.S. as essentially a way to keep the border encounter numbers artificially low.

On the northern border, the numbers are much smaller. Border Patrol made 23,721 arrests between October 2023 and September 2024, compared with 10,021 the previous 12 months.

Trump also struggled to get a handle on illegal border crossings. Arrests topped 850,000 in 2019, nearly triple the amount two years earlier, though still far below the tally of more than 2 million for two different years under Biden.

Drug smuggling

Trump and many Republicans have often portrayed the U.S.’s southern border as wide open to drug smuggling. They have also linked immigrants to drug smuggling and accused Mexico of doing little to stop it.

Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico.

The fentanyl scourge began well before Biden took office. Border seizures have jumped sharply under Biden, which may partly reflect improved detection. About 27,000 pounds (12,247 kilograms) of fentanyl was seized by U.S. authorities in the 2023 government budget year, compared with 2,545 pounds (1,154 kilograms) in 2019, when Trump was president.

Cooperation between the Mexican and U.S. governments on fighting drug smuggling undoubtedly suffered under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office at the end of September.

Before López Obrador took office in December 2018, the U.S. worked closely with Mexico’s military to take down drug capos.

But López Obrador, a nationalist and folksy populist, railed against the violence set off by the drug war waged by his predecessors and the Americans. He proposed addressing the root societal causes of violence found in poverty and a lack of opportunity for young people, in what he called “hugs, not bullets.”

For years, López Obrador denied that Mexico made fentanyl, despite evidence to the contrary, including statements from his own security officials. He blamed U.S. society, where he said families push children out of home too early, for cultivating addicts.

It’s only two months into the term of President Claudia Sheinbaum but there are signs that she appears more willing to let the military go after the cartels than her predecessor.

But while most of the fentanyl comes from Mexico, statistics show that it is Americans who are doing the smuggling across the border. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, 86.4% of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking crimes in a 12-month period ending September 2023 were American citizens.

Crime and immigration

Trump also has argued that the influx of immigrants is causing a crime surge in the U.S., although statistics show violent crime is on the way down.

Texas is the only state that tracks crime by immigration status. A study published by the National Academy of Sciences, based on Texas Department of Public Safety data from 2012 to 2016, found people in the U.S. illegally had “substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses.”

While FBI statistics do not separate out crimes by the immigration status of the assailant, there is no evidence of a spike in crime perpetrated by migrants, either along the U.S.-Mexico border or in cities seeing the greatest influx of migrants, like New York. Studies have found that people living in the U.S. illegally are less likely than native-born Americans to have been arrested for violent, drug and property crimes.

Some crime is inevitable given the large population of immigrants. There were an estimated 11 million people in the country illegally in January 2022, according to the latest estimate by U.S. Homeland Security Department. In 2022, the Census Bureau estimated the foreign-born population at 46.2 million, or nearly 14% of the total, with most states seeing double-digit percentage increases in the last dozen years.

Republicans have highlighted high-profile crimes by immigrants such as the February killing of 22-year-old Laken Riley in Georgia and argued that any crime committed by someone in the country illegally is a crime that shouldn’t have happened.

A Venezuelan man who entered the country illegally was convicted and sentenced to life in prison this month in Riley’s killing.

DALLAS – D Magazine reports that this week, the Washington Post examined how climate change could affect how people choose safe places to live. Using data from climate modeling firm AlphaGeo, the publication delivers an interactive look at how climate events like hurricanes, droughts, wildfires, floods, and more would impact cities and regions. It also looks at the types of events those regions are most at risk for encountering. AlphaGeo looked at 28 factors in each city or region to assess its vulnerability, including life expectancy, infrastructure spending, the economy, how tightly knit the community is, income inequality, and household debt. “Overlaying risk and resilience is a road map to a community’s future. It paints a picture of why a place is positioned to thrive or struggle because climate change won’t be a singular disaster,” the Post says. “It’s a succession of stresses, some small, others devastating.” Dallas-Fort Worth ranked high for resilience, partly thanks to its use of renewable energy and its economy. It scored low on energy reliability, as did most cities in Texas covered in the piece, due to the potential for extended power outages. The region ranked medium for risk, with the biggest risks coming from the heat, drought, and wildfires. Overall, the area is more resilient than risky—for now.