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AUSTIN – KUT reports that the outlook for water in Texas is looking a bit … dry. The state will face a long-term water deficit if fails to develop new supplies and gets hit by another multi-year drought, according to a new report. The report also suggests that a prolonged, severe drought, like that of the 1950s or 2011, could cost the state’s economy hundreds of billions of dollars. Texas 2036, a non-profit, public policy organization, commissioned the report to explore the possible consequences of under-investment in the state’s water infrastructure. That potential large loss of money is because industries such as agriculture, manufacturing and energy production heavily rely upon water availability, said Jeremy Mazur, director of infrastructure and natural resources policy at Texas 2036.

“If we don’t have reliable water infrastructure, then we likely cannot have the continuation of the Texas economic miracle,” he said. “But one of the more alarming findings was that if we don’t have enough reliable water supplies and have a long, severe drought, then the reliability of our state’s electric grid could come into question.” For those reasons, Mazur said Texas 2036 has chosen water infrastructure as one its main areas of focus for this year’s legislative session. He said he plans to work with state lawmakers to help fund improvements to the state’s more than 10,000 drinking water and wastewater systems. The organization estimates $154 billion will need to be spent on the state’s water infrastructure over the next 50 years. That includes $59 billion for new water supplies, nearly $74 billion for drinking water upgrades and over $21 billion to fix wastewater systems.

AUSTIN – The Austin American-Statesman reports the Legislature is proposing $1 billion for school voucher programs over the 2026-27 biennium, solidifying a commitment to the controversial program that’s become a top priority for Republican state leaders, according to proposed budget numbers released by the House and Senate on Wednesday. The program, which would use public money to help pay for private schooling, bitterly divided Republican lawmakers two years ago. In both the House and Senate budget proposals, school vouchers would receive top dollar, according to news releases from Speaker Dustin Burrows and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. The issue in 2023 divided House Republicans, with some GOP members from rural communities joining Democratic lawmakers to defeat the proposal. In response, three-term Republican Gov. Greg Abbott launched a bitter and largely successful campaign in the 2024 elections to oust Republican officials who voted against the school vouchers proposal.

`The Senate’s preliminary budget also proposes $4.9 billion to increase teacher pay and to change the Teacher Incentive Allotment program, which rewards teachers in certain subject areas whose students perform well on state tests. The funding would increase teachers’ pay by $4,000 and give rural educators an additional $6,000, according to Patrick’s statement. The spending proposals are part of the separate House and Senate budget bills that will guide state spending for the two-year cycle that begins Sept. 1. By releasing their budget drafts just over a week after the 140-day legislative session began Jan. 14, both chambers signaled that they intend to get off to a fast start when it comes to staking out their spending priorities. In laying out education priorities, both chambers also are proposing $400 million for school safety. In 2023, lawmakers passed a set of safety requirements for districts in the wake of the May 24, 2022, mass shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

On the South Texas coast, the city of Corpus Christi has initiated an emergency effort to boost its water supply as local reservoirs experience a yearslong decline and water demand from big industrial projects continues to grow.

The Corpus Christi City Council approved a measure last week to begin leasing land for wells that will pump millions of gallons per day into the Nueces River, the region’s main water supply. It followed an emergency authorization memo for the project issued by the city manager on Dec. 31.

Two weeks earlier, Corpus Christi, which supplies water to 600,000 people in seven counties, enacted its strictest water use restrictions in at least 30 years, when combined levels in its two reservoirs on the Nueces River fell below 20% full after years of sparse rainfall.

“This is my fourth drought in my 43-year engineering career,” said John Michael, a senior vice president with engineering contractor Hanson Professional Services and manager for Corpus Christi’s Nueces River groundwater project, which aims to produce 20 million gallons per day by autumn. “They’re not easy. They’re high anxiety. They’re stressful.”

Drought has always been a part of life in South Texas. But in recent years, Corpus Christi has faced combined pressures of a prolonged dry spell and record-breaking heat during a period of rapid growth in its industrial sector.

City leaders initially hoped to meet the water demands of new industrial facilities with a large seawater desalination plant, which they planned to build by 2023. But the project became mired in delays and still remains years away from completion.

Meanwhile, the new industrial facilities have begun to draw water. An enormous plastics plant owned by ExxonMobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. uses millions of gallons per day. A lithium refinery owned by Tesla is slowly starting operations and plans to drastically increase its water consumption in coming years, according to water authority records. Another company has secured rights to millions of gallons per day of Nueces River water to produce hydrogen for export, but hasn’t yet broken ground.

Several other hydrogen plants, a carbon capture facility and a new refinery are also in development nearby. Other companies are interested in building here, too.

“There are a lot of projects that have looked at locating in South Texas, but it will be difficult until this drought is over or we have added some additional supply,” Michael said. “It’s going to be difficult to take on any big new industrial projects, other than the ones that have already started.”

Corpus Christi now hopes to build its first desalination plant by mid-2028. If the city’s reservoirs continue their rate of decline from recent years, that could be too late.

The Nueces River groundwater initiative was one of several short-term water supply projects described in an update issued by the city in January. As the two Nueces River reservoirs dwindle, crews are also hurriedly expanding a pipeline and pump stations to Corpus Christi’s third reservoir, Lake Texana, which remains 75% full but is 100 miles away. The update also said a private desalination plant built by a local plastics manufacturer, CC Polymers, will come online in 2025, and could be incorporated into the public water supply.

“It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing right now,” said Perry Fowler, executive director of the Texas Water Infrastructure Network, a lobbying group based in Austin. “The water supply situation is rather serious.”

Corpus Christi isn’t alone. Across parts of south, west and central Texas, decades of rapid development and recurring drought have stretched water supplies to their limits. Official projections show some places running dry within 10 or 20 years, with few new sources of water to turn to.

That’s a major deterrent to big businesses, from microchip makers to chemical plants, that would otherwise invest in Texas.

This year, Fowler said, water planning is expected to take center stage as the Texas Legislature meets for its biennial session, with legislation in development that could make billions of dollars of state financing available to develop new sources across the state.

“Water is being viewed appropriately as an economic development issue, so I think it’s got really broad support,” Fowler said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the discussion elevated to this level.”

Real solutions, he said, will be developed over decades. In the immediate term, there isn’t much state lawmakers can do.

In Corpus Christi, leaders watched this situation creep up slowly. More than a year ago, the city stopped releasing reservoir water meant to support wetland ecosystems where the Nueces River meets the Gulf. But levels kept falling, from 44% full in 2023 to 31% a year ago and 19% today.

In December, the city intensified restrictions for local residents, prohibiting any outdoor water use for landscaping or car washing.

Water use restrictions, however, don’t apply to the region’s sprawling refineries and chemical plants, thanks to a purchasable exemption for industrial users passed by the City Council in 2018.

Proceeds from that exemption fee — 25 cents per 1,000 gallons consumed — were meant to fund development of the seawater desalination plant that was supposed to have been ready by 2023 to meet the demands of rapid growth in the region’s industrial sector.

When city staff members first presented their desalination plan to the city council in 2019, they displayed a graph showing large increases in water demand in 2022 and 2023, citing the Exxon-SABIC plastics plant, a new steel mill and other projects.

“A new water supply designed to meet new water demand should be in place before the new demand is consuming water,” the presentation said. “Based on supply and demand projections, the first Seawater Desalination Plant needs to be operational (supplying water) in early 2023.”

But the project stalled, mired by infighting with the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, questions over environmental impacts to Corpus Christi Bay and challenges from activists who saw water supply as a means to push back against industrial expansion in their area.

Meanwhile, in 2022, an exceptionally severe drought year, the new projects began to draw water, gradually ramping up operations. In 2023, Texas logged its hottest year on record statewide, and 2024 became the hottest on record for the South Texas region. During each of those years, levels in the Nueces River reservoirs declined.

The prospect of scarcity hasn’t deterred big companies from locating thirsty projects in the area, a long-established refinery hub with a busy commercial port.

“The majority of what are slated for our communities are large-volume water users,” said Elida Castillo, mayor pro-tem for the small city of Taft, which gets its water from Corpus Christi. “At the end of the day, they require tons of water that we do not have, and it’s all in the name of economic development.”

In nearby Robstown, Tesla is completing construction on the nation’s first large-scale lithium refinery. The facility plans to use a million gallons of water per day by October 2025 but hopes to eventually use eight million gallons per day, according to February 2024 meeting minutes from the South Texas Water Authority, a provider that buys its water from Corpus Christi.

An internal bulletin from Corpus Christi Water in April 2024 said the facility could use up to 10 million gallons per day.

Avina Clean Hydrogen, a New Jersey-based company founded in 2020, has secured rights to 5.5 million gallons per day of Nueces River water to produce hydrogen ammonia for export.

“I don’t know how they’re going to give them all those millions of gallons of water per day if we don’t have any water here,” said Myra Alaniz, a retired federal government worker who lives near the Avina site and is a member of the Tejano civic organization Chispa Texas.

Another hydrogen company has leased 2,400 acres in the nearby town of Agua Dulce, according to a December 2024 report from the Robstown Area Development Commission.

The pipeline giant Enbridge is also building a hydrogen plant in neighboring San Patricio County, which gets its water from Corpus Christi, and DRL Refineries is building an oil refinery to produce gasoline. To the south, in Kleberg County, a startup called 1PointFive plans a large facility it says will capture 30 million tons of greenhouse gases every year from the air, mix them with water and inject them underground to mitigate the effects of climate change.

By 2030, this stretch of coast will face a water shortfall of nearly 28 million gallons per day if alternate supplies are not developed, according to Texas’ latest statewide water plan, growing to 44 million gallons per day by 2070. In that time, temperatures are expected to continue rising, according to the Office of the Texas State Climatologist at Texas A&M University, driven by the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. (Texas is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world.)

According to the state’s projections, Corpus Christi should be able to handle the demand if it succeeds in completing a 30 million gallon per day seawater desalination plant by 2028, as it currently projects. But it will be close, and it won’t be enough to meet future needs.

Now, the Nueces River Authority, a small public agency, is leading an effort to assemble interested parties behind plans for a gargantuan desalination facility that could meet regional water needs for a generation to come.

John Byrum, executive director of the Nueces River Authority, wrote in a September 2024 letter to the Port of Corpus Christi Authority, obtained via records request: “Current water supplies are an issue for industries wanting to locate to the Coastal Bend as well as the Nueces Basin. If the Nueces region is to realize the benefits of the high paying jobs provided by industries currently inquiring and wanting to move to the area, water sources in addition to the City of Corpus Christi’s Seawater Desalination Plant must be developed.”

Byrum proposes a desalination facility located on an island owned by the port that would initially produce 100 million gallons per day of freshwater, then scale up to 450 million gallons per day over subsequent decades — more than is currently produced from any desalination plant on earth. It would include a system of pipelines and pump stations moving vast volumes of water hundreds of miles uphill to meet the needs of cities in Central Texas.

The enormous undertaking would cost untold billions of dollars and represent one of the world’s largest water infrastructure projects, though smaller than efforts currently underway in China.

“It is a huge project, but keep in mind we’re going to phase this in,” Byrum said in an interview. “We’re looking forward to working with the Legislature this session on badly needed water supply.”

Byrum is currently gathering resolutions of interest from local towns and entities, which he hopes to use to win support from state lawmakers when they gather in Austin for this year’s legislative session.

For now, just upstream from Corpus Christi, crews work hastily on the emergency groundwater project. Several old wells along the Nueces River banks were used for this purpose during droughts of the 1980s and ’90s, but have long been abandoned.

“Investigative work is ongoing,” said a spokesperson for the Corpus Christi Water Department in a written response to questions. “This is complex work that requires time.”

The city hopes to lease the land, test and rehabilitate the wells and then build new pump stations to move groundwater into the river and downstream to users as soon as possible.

Local drought conditions are currently at stage three, “urgent.” If reservoir levels continue to decline through the summer, the city’s next step is the fourth and final stage, “emergency.” At that point, industrial users will have to steeply curtail water consumption, causing major economic disruption.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the original article, click here.

WASHINGTON — Congress approved a bill Wednesday to detain undocumented immigrants who have been accused of committing even minor crimes, with two Texas Democrats voting for the bill.

The Laken Riley Act passed the U.S. House on Wednesday afternoon on a 263-156 vote, with 46 Democrats joining all voting Republicans supporting the bill. U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen were among the Democrats who voted for the bill.

Supporters worked to make sure that the bill targeting undocumented immigrants would be the first legislation of President Donald Trump’s second term. He has campaigned on mass deportations and hardening the border, and many of his Republican allies in Congress are eager to provide the legislative muscle in support. More than 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, with 1.6 million living in Texas. The bill now heads to Trump’s desk to be signed into law. The U.S. Senate advanced the bill on Monday with 12 Democratic senators joining all Republicans in voting for the bill.

The bill is named after Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was killed by an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela. It would require the Department of Homeland Security to detain undocumented immigrants arrested for or charged with burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting or assaulting a police officer. It also allows state governments to sue the federal government if they feel Washington is failing to enforce border laws.

The bill does not include funding to increase detention capacity. Funding for immigration enforcement is one of Republicans’ top priorities as it works out its spending plans for the year.

The bill is separate from similar legislation that passed the House last week that would require deportation for migrants convicted of sex crimes or domestic violence. Cuellar, Gonzalez and U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson, D-Farmers Branch, were among the 61 Democrats who joined Republicans in voting for that bill. It is now in the Senate.

Both Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz have advocated for stricter penalties for criminal activity by undocumented immigrants. Cornyn included an amendment to the act that would make assaulting a law enforcement officer one of the punishable crimes.

Last year, Cruz introduced the Justice of Jocelyn Act, which was named after Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old Houstonian who was murdered last June. Two undocumented immigrants from Venezuela were charged with her murder.

The Justice for Jocelyn Act would require the Secretary of Homeland Security to detain all migrants unless there is no detention space available and mandate tracking devices and curfews for migrants who are not in detention. The bill would also mandate deportation for migrants who fail to comply with their release order.

Many of the Democrats who voted for the Laken Riley Act represent competitive districts where Republicans have accused Democrats of being too light on the border. Gonzalez’s district was Republicans’ biggest target in Texas this year, and Cuellar is likely to be targeted in next year’s elections. Both represent districts Trump won that have swung heavily to the right in recent years.

Cuellar and Gonzalez have both broken with their party on votes related to the border and other issues Republicans campaigned on, such as transgender rights. Cuellar founded a Democrats for Border Security task force last year.

But other Democrats say the bill amounts to fear mongering. A National Institute of Justice study found that undocumented immigrants tend to commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S.-born citizens. The Laken Riley Act does not make exceptions for recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — a program that protects immigrants who entered the country illegally as children from deportation.

“It makes it so that immigrants, including dreamers, who are supposed to be protected from deportation, if they were accused of a crime like shoplifting, even if they didn’t do it, that they and their families’ lives could be ruined by deportation.” said U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin. “Laken Riley’s killer was tried and convicted and sentenced to life in prison, and he should be convicted and held accountable for this horrific killing. But the Laken Riley Act has nothing to do with her.”

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — UPDATE: Seven San Antonio police officers responding to a “suicide in progress” call were shot and wounded by a suspect who was later found dead inside an apartment, police said.

All of the officers sustained non-life threatening injuries in the Wednesday night shooting, and six of them had been released from hospitals by Thursday afternoon, according to a San Antonio police Facebook post.

The officer still in the hospital was expected to fully recover, police said. A preliminary police report of the incident did not detail their injuries.

The officers responded to the initial call at the apartment complex when they received another call of shots fired, according to police. San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus had said that the original call came from one of the suspect’s family members.

When officers arrived, a female coming out of the apartment said the suspect was shooting inside and was coming out. Police said Brandon Scott Poulos, 46, then started firing at the officers, striking one in the leg.

The wounded officer was pulled from the scene, and Poulos, who had retreated back into the apartment, began firing again and wounded several more officers. All of the wounded were either taken to a hospital or treated at the scene.

A SWAT team was mobilized. Officers attempted to negotiate with Poulos for several hours to surrender peacefully, police said. Poulos was later found deceased, and the police report said investigators had not yet determined if he shot himself or was shot by a SWAT officer. Poulos had been arrested Jan. 18 for a violation of a protection order but had been released on bail the next day, police said.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: Four San Antonio police officers were shot Wednesday night while responding to a “suicide in progress” call and a heavy presence of police were near an apartment complex trying to detain the suspect, authorities said.

None of the officers’ injuries were believed to be life-threatening, San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus said. He described the suspect as a man in his 40s and said the original call to police came from a family member.

More than an hour after the shooting, McManus said SWAT was setting up in the neighborhood of Stone Oak and that efforts to bring in the suspect were ongoing.

“We are working on a plan right now to try and get the shooter out,” he said.

The four officers, who have between four and eight years of experience, were transported to a hospital, McManus said. The first officer was shot in his lower extremities and another officer was shot in the upper torso, according to McManus. He did not describe the injuries of the other officers.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s inauguration-day executive orders and promises of mass deportations of “millions and millions” of people will hinge on securing money for detention centers.

The Trump administration has not publicly said how many immigration detention beds it needs to achieve its goals, or what the cost will be. However, an estimated 11.7 million people are living in the U.S. illegally, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement currently has the budget to detain only about 41,000 people.

The government would need additional space to hold people while they are processed and arrangements are made to remove them, sometimes by plane. The Department of Homeland Security estimates the daily cost for a bed for one adult is about $165.

Just one piece of Trump’s plan, a bill known as the Laken Riley Act that Congress has passed, would require at least $26.9 billion to ramp up capacity at immigrant detention facilities to add 110,000 beds, according to a recent memo from DHS.

That bill — named after a Georgia nursing student whose murder by a Venezuelan man last year became a rallying cry for Trump’s White House campaign — expands requirements for immigration authorities to detain anyone in the country illegally who is accused of theft and violent crimes.

Trump also is deploying troops to try and stop all illegal entry at the southern U.S. border. He triggered the Alien Enemies Act to combat cartels. The rarely used 1798 law allows the president to deport anyone who is not a U.S. citizen and is from a country with which there is a “declared war” or a threatened or attempted “invasion or predatory incursion.”

Detention infrastructure also will be stretched by Trump’s ban of a practice known as “catch and release” that allows some migrants to live in the U.S. while awaiting immigration court proceedings, in favor of detention and deportation.
ICE uses facilities around the U.S. to hold immigrants

ICE currently detains immigrants at its processing centers and at privately operated detention facilities, along with local prisons and jails under contracts that can involve state and city governments. It has zero facilities geared toward detention of immigrant families, who account for roughly one-third of arrivals on the southern U.S. border.

“There’s a limitation on the number of beds available to ICE,” said John Sandweg, who was acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama. “There are only so many local jails you contract with, private vendors who have available beds. And if the administration wants to make a major uptick in detention capacity, that’s going to require the construction of some new facilities.”

Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S. border with Mexico leverages the U.S. military to shore up mass deportations and provide “appropriate detention space.” The Pentagon also might provide air transportation support to DHS.

Private investors are betting on a building boom, driving up stock prices at the top two immigration detention providers — Florida-based GEO Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic.

A fast-track budgeting maneuver in Congress called “reconciliation” could provide more detention funding as soon as April. At the same time, the Texas state land commissioner has offered the federal government a parcel of rural ranchland along the U.S.-Mexico border for deportation facilities.
Where could ICE add detention space?

The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that ICE is considering an expansion of immigrant detention space across at least eight states, in locations ranging from Leavenworth, Kansas, to the outskirts of major immigrant populations in New York City and San Francisco, said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney for the group and its National Prison Project.

The ACLU sued for access to correspondence from private detention providers after ICE solicited feedback last year on a potential expansion. Related emails from detention providers suggest the possible redeployment of a tent facility at Carrizo Springs, Texas, previously used to detain immigrant children, and the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas — one of two major immigrant family detention centers that the Biden administration phased out in 2021.

“Under the Trump administration, Homeland Security will be working to try to detain everyone that it possibly can and also expand its detention capacity footprint well beyond what is currently available in the United States at this point,” Cho said.

Cho added that Congress ultimately holds the purse strings for immigrant detention infrastructure — and that the Pentagon’s involvement under Trump’s emergency edict — warrants a debate.

“How does this detract from our own military’s readiness?” she said. “Does the military actually have the capacity to provide appropriate facilities for detention of immigrants?”
Using the military

Advocates for immigrant rights are warning against a hyper-militarized police state that could vastly expand the world’s largest detention system for migrants. Immigrant detention facilities overseen by ICE have struggled broadly to comply with some federal standards for care, hindering safety for staff and detainees, a Homeland Security Department inspector general found during 17 unannounced inspections from 2020-2023.

During Trump’s first administration, he authorized the use of military bases to detain immigrant children — including Army installations at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Goodfellow Air Force Base. In 2014, Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families caught crossing the border illegally.

U.S. military bases have been used repeatedly since the 1970s to accommodate the resettlement of waves of immigrants fleeing Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

___

Groves reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed.

GULF OF MEXICO (AP) – The water bordered by the Southern United States, Mexico and Cuba will be critical to shipping lanes and vacationers whether it’s called the Gulf of Mexico, as it has been for four centuries, or the Gulf of America, as President Donald Trump ordered this week. North America’s highest mountain peak will still loom above Alaska whether it’s called Mt. Denali, as ordered by former President Barack Obama in 2015, or changed back to Mt. McKinley as Trump also decreed.

But Trump’s territorial assertions, in line with his “America First” worldview, sparked a round of rethinking by mapmakers and teachers, snark on social media and sarcasm by at least one other world leader. And though Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put the Trumpian “Gulf of America” on an official document and some other gulf-adjacent states were considering doing the same, it was not clear how many others would follow Trump’s lead.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum joked that if Trump went ahead with the renaming, her country would rename North America “Mexican America.” On Tuesday, she toned it down: “For us and for the entire world it will continue to be called the Gulf of Mexico.”
The politics of maps are undeniable

Map lines are inherently political. After all, they’re representations of the places that are important to human beings — and those priorities can be delicate and contentious, even more so in a globalized world.

There’s no agreed-upon scheme to name boundaries and features across the Earth.

“Denali” is the mountain’s preferred name for Alaska Natives, while “McKinley” is a tribute to President William McKinley, designated in the late 19th century by a gold prospector. China sees Taiwan as its own territory, and the countries surrounding what the United States calls the South China Sea have multiple names for the same body of water.

The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century, although usage of “Gulf” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The government of Iran — formerly Persia — threatened to sue Google in 2012 over the company’s decision not to label the body of water at all on its maps. Many Arab countries don’t recognize Israel and instead call it Palestine. And in many official releases, Israel calls the occupied West Bank by its biblical name, “Judea and Samaria.”

Americans and Mexicans diverge on what to call another key body of water, the river that forms the border between Texas and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. Americans call it the Rio Grande; Mexicans call it the Rio Bravo.

Trump’s executive order — titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” — concludes thusly: “It is in the national interest to promote the extraordinary heritage of our Nation and ensure future generations of American citizens celebrate the legacy of our American heroes. The naming of our national treasures, including breathtaking natural wonders and historic works of art, should honor the contributions of visionary and patriotic Americans in our Nation’s rich past.”

But what to call the gulf with the 3,700-mile coastline?

“It is, I suppose, an internationally recognized sea, but (to be honest), a situation like this has never come up before so I need to confirm the appropriate convention,” said Peter Bellerby, who said he was talking over the issue with the cartographers at his London company, Bellerby & Co. Globemakers. “If, for instance, he wanted to change the Atlantic Ocean to the American Ocean, we would probably just ignore it.”
For some, it’s decision time

As of Wednesday night, map applications for Google and Apple still called the mountain and the gulf by their old names. Spokespersons for those platforms did not immediately respond to emailed questions.

A spokesperson for National Geographic, one of the most prominent map makers in the U.S., said this week that the company does not comment on individual cases and referred questions to a statement on its web site, which reads in part that it “strives to be apolitical, to consult multiple authoritative sources, and to make independent decisions based on extensive research.” National Geographic also has a policy of including explanatory notes for place names in dispute, citing as an example a body of water between Japan and the Korean peninsula, referred to as the Sea of Japan by the Japanese and the East Sea by Koreans.

In discussion on social media, one thread noted that the Sears Tower in Chicago was renamed the Willis Tower in 2009, though it’s still commonly known by its original moniker. Pennsylvania’s capital, Harrisburg, renamed its Market Street to Martin Luther King Boulevard and then switched back to Market Street several years later — with loud complaints both times. In 2017, New York’s Tappan Zee Bridge was renamed for the late Gov. Mario Cuomo to great controversy. The new name appears on maps, but “no one calls it that,” noted another user.

“Are we going to start teaching this as the name of the body of water?” asked one Reddit poster on Tuesday.

“I guess you can tell students that SOME PEOPLE want to rename this body of water the Gulf of America, but everyone else in the world calls it the Gulf of Mexico,” came one answer. “Cover all your bases — they know the reality-based name, but also the wannabe name as well.”

Wrote another user: “I’ll call it the Gulf of America when I’m forced to call the Tappan Zee the Mario Cuomo Bridge, which is to say never.”

AUSTIN – The Texas Ethics Commission has dismissed a complaint against the state Republican Party Chair alleging that he illegally threatened and intimidated lawmakers over their support for a House speaker candidate, according to the state House Member who filed the complaint.

Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, told The Texas Tribune on Tuesday that the commission dismissed the complaint against Texas GOP Chair Abraham George because they did not believe they had the jurisdiction to give an opinion.

The complaint highlights an intense and ongoing civil war between the Texas GOP’s far-right wing and its more establishment, but still deeply conservative, flank. That acrimony exploded late last year after a majority of House Republicans voted to support Mansfield Republican Rep. David Cook’s bid for House speaker. The same day, Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, announced that he had enough bipartisan support in the 150-member chamber to win a majority. He was elected speaker last week.

Burrows’ defiance immediately prompted a pressure campaign from the Texas GOP. In the lead-up to the official House vote last week, the party and George vowed to send negative mailers about Burrows supporters into their districts and to censure any Republican who does not vote for Cook — a move that, under recently adopted party rules, would bar those lawmakers from appearing on a primary ballot for two years.

In the complaint, Harris alleged that George violated ethics rules by threatening to spend money on mail pieces in Harris’s district attacking him if he didn’t cast his vote for Cook. Harris argued that such a mailer amounted to an “economic benefit” for a primary candidate against Harris and thus constituted a bribe.

“I think they chose the politically expedient way out,” Harris said of the commission’s decision. The Texas GOP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The commission declined to comment. Ethics complaints that are dismissed are confidential under state law. Typically, when the commission receives an ethics complaint, it has five days to determine whether the alleged violation comes under its jurisdiction. When the commission declares it does not have jurisdiction, the complainant can request a review by the commission. Harris said he hasn’t decided yet if he wants to request a review.

A mandatory review of the ethics boards by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, which evaluates agencies and issues recommendations, is already underway.

Some Republicans have sought to use the review period as an opportunity to weaken the ethics commission’s oversight powers. That includes political operatives and groups funded by Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks, two West Texas oil billionaires who have spent tens of millions of dollars pushing Texas to the far right. Wilks and Dunn are longtime foes of the Ethics Commission; one of their chief operatives has been engaged in an unsuccessful, 10-year legal attempt to strip the agency of its regulatory powers.

In the days after Harris’ allegations were made public, groups and figures funded by the billionaires again mobilized against the ethics commission. The complaint, they argued, proved that the commission had become a political “weapon,” wielded by powerful people to silence everyday citizens by conducting intense and time-consuming investigations into even the most baseless allegations or mundane violations.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.