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AUSTIN – The Texas Tribune reports a bill that would grant political appointees unprecedented oversight of the state’s public universities heads to Gov. Greg Abbott after the two chambers in the Texas Legislature agreed on a compromise Saturday.

Other conservative-led states, including Florida and North Carolina, have already sought to influence who leads colleges and what gets taught in classrooms. Texas is poised to go even further, shifting some responsibilities traditionally held by professors to politically appointed university regents. The legislation would also create a state office with the power to investigate universities and would threaten their funding if they don’t comply with the law.

Supporters argue the measure is necessary to combat what they perceive as a liberal bias in universities and to better support the state’s workforce needs. Critics say it will undermine teaching and research.

Four squares with four icons: the top left icon is of the Texas capitol with a yellow question mark over it, the top right icon is of a bill with with a yellow question mark over it, the bottom left icon is of the Texas capitol with a red checkmark over it and the bottom right icon is of a bill with a green checkmark over it.

Senate Bill 37 would create a state-level committee charged with recommending the courses that should be required for graduation. Each public university system’s board of regents — who oversee the school’s operations and are appointed by the governor — would also create committees to review curricula, which would be able to reject any course that is seen as ideologically charged or doesn’t align with workforce demands.

“Members, this is a bill you can be proud to vote for,” state Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Plano Republican who carried the bill in the House, said during debate last week. “The end result is going to be that the degrees that your children and grandchildren graduate with are going to be more valuable. They’re going to be able to get those degrees faster. They’re going to be less expensive.”

The final version of the bill clarifies universities — under the guidance of their governing boards — have the final say over the curricula. A House and Senate panel in a closed-door conference committee also agreed to get rid of language from an earlier version of the bill that would have required governing boards to ensure university curricula do not advocate any race, sex, ethnicity or religious belief is inherently superior to another.

Faculty across the state have criticized the legislation throughout session, saying it could lead many of them to self-censor since teaching anything related to race, gender or inequality could be misinterpreted as a violation. The bill would also limit faculty’s influence on campus. Faculty councils or senates, bodies that have traditionally advised university administrators on academic and hiring decisions, would become smaller. In addition, SB 37 would require half of their members to be appointed by the university president, rather than elected. Any member would be subject to removal if they use their position for political advocacy.

The bill would also require regents to approve the hiring of more administrators. Traditionally, they have only gotten involved in the hiring of top leadership positions.

Finally, the legislation would create an office, led by a gubernatorial appointee, to ensure schools are complying with the new law. The office could recommend limiting the state funding of universities that violate the law until a state auditor confirms they are in compliance.

The bill comes amid repeated clashes between Republican state leaders and professors in recent years. In particular, University of Texas at Austin faculty angered Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick with a 2021 letter reaffirming their right to teach critical race theory. That academic discipline explores how racism has permeated America’s institutions and has become a regular target of conservative criticism. UT-Austin professors also condemned university administrators and state leaders for the law enforcement crackdown on pro-Palestinian protesters on campus last year.

House Democrats last week raised concerns that rigidly reviewing degree programs in the way the bill describes could lead to the elimination of degrees in humanities and social sciences. They also said students would ultimately be the ones paying when universities have to respond to frivolous complaints sent to the statewide office.

“The bill is not about improving education. It’s about increasing control,” said Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin. “It threatens academic freedom. It undermines faculty voices, and it injects politics into the classroom at a time when we should be laser focused on expanding access, improving student outcomes and restoring trust in our education systems.”

Before passing the bill on the House floor Sunday, Democrats and Republicans also debated whether it would lead to a faculty brain drain. Rep. Erin Zwiener, a Democrat, said she had heard there’d be a dearth of applicants to Texas State University, which is in her district, because the legislation would disempower them. But Shaheen said according to his research, faculty who have threatened to leave Texas in recent years have not followed through.

AUSTIN – The Texas Tribune reports that Texas lawmakers signed off Saturday on a $338 billion two-year spending plan that directs billions toward hiking teacher pay, cutting property taxes and shoring up the state’s water infrastructure, after House and Senate budget writers ironed out their differences and won approval from both chambers on their final draft.

The budget now heads to Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who is expected to verify there is enough revenue to cover the Legislature’s planned spending — the last step before the 1,056-page bill reaches Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

The spending plan doles out the money to run the state’s business for the next two years, from September through the end of August 2027. It includes the underlying funding for some of the biggest bills passed this session, much of it paid for with general revenue, Texas’ main source of taxpayer funds used to cover core services.

Lawmakers approved $149 billion in general revenue spending, with the rest drawn from federal funds and other state revenue earmarked for specific uses.

The budget’s $338 billion price tag is nearly $17 billion more than what lawmakers budgeted two years ago, about a 5% increase. However, the Legislature is expected to approve additional spending for the current cycle — which runs through the end of August — in what is known as the supplemental budget, lessening the year-to-year increase.

A large chunk of the budget — more than one out of every seven dollars — is devoted to maintaining and providing new property tax cuts, a tab that has grown to $51 billion. For the last several years, lawmakers have tried to rein in Texans’ property tax bills by sending billions of dollars to school districts to reduce how much in property taxes they collect from homeowners and businesses.

The state does not collect property taxes; its coffers are filled through a combination of sources that include sales tax, taxes on oil and gas production, and franchise taxes on businesses.

With the help of a projected $24 billion budget surplus, the Legislature is spending some $45 billion to maintain existing cuts lawmakers have enacted since 2019, with the rest going toward a mix of “compression” — sending money to school districts to replace funds they otherwise would have collected in property taxes, thus lowering tax rates — and raising the state’s homestead exemption, or the amount of a home’s value that can’t be taxed to pay for public schools. A chunk of the money will also go toward tax cuts for businesses.

About $3 billion of the property tax relief will come from money lawmakers had originally planned to spend on border security. The team of five senators and five House members who hammered out the final budget draft diverted nearly half of the $6.5 billion set aside for the state’s border clampdown in earlier versions, marking one of the biggest eleventh-hour budget changes.

It was a reflection of a monthslong decrease in illegal border crossings and the billions that could be coming to Texas under a tentative federal plan to reimburse states for their immigration enforcement efforts under the Biden administration.

Sen. Joan Huffman, a Houston Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, said the spending plan is a “responsible, balanced budget that falls within all constitutional and statutory spending limits and meets the needs of our rapidly growing state.”

“The Texas economy is the envy of the nation, and the budget will secure our state’s prosperity for generations to come,” Huffman, the Senate’s lead budget writer, said on the floor Saturday. “We have leveraged our state surplus over several sessions to make targeted, one-time investments without burdening future budgets.”

Rep. Greg Bonnen, R-Friendswood and Huffman’s counterpart in the House, said the budget “prioritizes public education, tax relief, public safety, infrastructure and improving taxpayer services for individuals and businesses.”

The House and Senate have been largely aligned on budget matters this session. Each chamber approved plans earlier this year that spent similar amounts overall and lined up on big-ticket items including how much money to put toward school vouchers, property tax cuts and water infrastructure. Much of the fine print — outlining how that money would be used — was worked out in separate bills.

Among the marquee items is an $8.5 billion boost for Texas’ public schools, the product of weeks of negotiations between the chambers. The funding package, known as House Bill 2, provides extra money for teacher and staff pay raises, educator preparation, special education, safety requirements and early childhood learning.

Another $1 billion in the budget is set aside for a school voucher program that will allow families to use public money to fund their children’s private school tuition or pay for a range of school-related expenses. Abbott has already signed the voucher bill into law and has said he will approve the school funding bill.

“We passed historic policies for the nearly 6 million students across Texas, but this is where we bring those policies to life,” Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe and chair of the Senate Education Committee, said of the state budget, known as Senate Bill 1. “Without SB 1, those reforms are just words on paper. This budget turns our promises into action and gives lasting weight to our priorities.”

Shannon Halbrook, a fiscal policy expert at the left-leaning think tank Every Texan, said the budget contains “some things that we consider wins with an asterisk.”

“We’re definitely happy that they’re investing more into public education,” Halbrook said. “It’s not quite the way we would have preferred for them to do it. For example, we’ve consistently advocated for increasing the basic allotment, because it’s a really simple way to provide additional funding for schools across the board. Instead, HB 2 chooses to kind of do it in a much more complicated, convoluted way.”

More than 70% of the budget is reserved for education and health and human services, the latter of which includes Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health coverage for children from low-income households that make too much to qualify for Medicaid.

One lingering uncertainty was how much the state would hike pay for personal care “community attendants,” who are paid through the Medicaid program to help patients with tasks such as laundry, errands, grooming, eating and medication. The House had proposed increasing their base wage to more than $14 an hour, nearly $2 more than the Senate’s proposal.

Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Brenham Republican and the chamber’s lead health care budget writer, said the issue amounted to “one of the most contentious parts” of her section of the budget. In the end, the chambers agreed to meet in the middle, spending nearly $1 billion in general revenue to hike the attendants’ base pay to $13 an hour.

Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, said the attendants fulfill a critical function caring for vulnerable Texans, and even with the pay raises, “we have not gotten anywhere near where we need to be.” But, she acknowledged, “we did get something.”

“This is the Legislature’s budget. It doesn’t have everything in it we want,” said Howard, a longtime member of the House Appropriations Committee. “That’s the whole point of why we’re here. It’s a compromise with the Senate … And any compromise doesn’t include everything we fought for in the House.”

The budget also puts some $10 billion toward the state’s energy, water and broadband infrastructure. That includes $5 billion to double the Texas Energy Fund, a low-interest taxpayer-funded loan program meant to incentivize the development of gas-fueled power plants.

Lawmakers are also putting $2.5 billion into the Texas Water Fund as part of the supplemental budget for the current spending cycle. The fund is used to pay for new water supply projects — such as desalination — repairing old water infrastructure, conservation and flood mitigation projects.

In November, voters will be asked to approve a proposal to allot $1 billion a year starting in 2027— $20 billion in total — until 2047 to secure the state’s water supply.

CROCKETT – A woman in Crockett has been arrested after allegedly selling counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that led to a man’s death, according to our news partners at KETK.

The Crockett Police Department said that they received reports of an unresponsive man on May 21 and went to the person’s apartment on Sallas Street at around 11 p.m. Once on the scene, officers along with Houston County EMS discovered the individual had died, which was believed to be caused by a drug overdose.

Inside the victim’s apartment, officers reported finding small blue pills marked “M 30” which are known to resemble oxycodone or Percocet. Further investigation led officials to believe that the pills were counterfeit and contained fentanyl, causing the victim’s death.

Authorities discovered that the victim had bought the pills from Kimberlee Ann Sherman of Crockett and obtained an arrest warrant for Sherman on May 22. She was arrested later that day and charged with delivery of a controlled substance.

The next day, Sherman posted a $25,000 bond and was released.

The Crockett Police Department confirmed that the pills the victim purchased were counterfeit and contained fentanyl.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With predictions for a busy hurricane season beginning Sunday, experts in storms and disasters are worried about something potentially as chaotic as the swirling winds: Massive cuts to the federal system that forecasts, tracks and responds to hurricanes.

Experts are alarmed over the large-scale staff reductions, travel and training restrictions and grant cut-offs since President Donald Trump took office at both the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which prepares for and responds to hurricanes, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which tracks and forecasts them.

“My nightmare is a major catastrophic storm hitting an area that is reeling from the impact of all of this nonsense from the Trump administration and people will die. And that could happen in Florida, that could happen in Texas, that could happen in South Carolina,” said Susan Cutter, the director of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.

Experts: DOGE cuts diminish FEMA

About 2,000 full-time staff have left FEMA since Trump took office in January, a loss of roughly one-third of the agency’s full-time workforce, amid Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) mandated cuts. Scholars who study emergency management are concerned by both the reduction in capacity and the “brain drain” of experienced staff.

“There’s really been a brain drain within FEMA in addition to the loss of overall employees,” said Samantha Montano, who teaches emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. She noted that many who left were in critical management positions.

The agency is run by an acting chief, David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who served overseas and worked as the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. He does not appear to have any experience in managing disasters. Emergency management requires knowing where to get things, who to call, how things work and how to get it done quickly — which comes from experience and establishing relationships with state officials, Montano and Cutter said.

What’s happening reminds former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate of 2005, the year Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana and exposed inexperienced and poorly prepared governments at all levels, especially the then-FEMA chief who came from a horse-rearing association. Fugate said he’s especially worried about top experienced disaster people leaving FEMA.

FEMA canceled various emergency management trainings this spring, moved others online and restricted travel to events such as the National Hurricane Conference. Some trainings have resumed.

“Given the reduction in staffing, being unable to do trainings, participate in conferences, there’s potential that the federal government’s ability is diminished,’’ said former Florida Emergency Management chief Bryan Koon, now president of the disaster preparedness firm IEM.

FEMA has also cut disaster resilience programs. Making areas more survivable saves up to $13 for every dollar spent, said Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado.

The federal government promises to be ready for hurricane season, which runs through November.

“FEMA is shifting from bloated DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens,” Associate FEMA Administrator Geoff Harbaugh said in a email. “FEMA is fully activated in preparation for hurricane season.”

FEMA’s relationship with states

Richardson promised to push more responsibilities to the states. He warned that the agency will only do what the law requires and shift more costs to states.

But Koon noted that states haven’t budgeted for FEMA’s changes, adding: “The biggest issue right now is just the uncertainty.”

Some states — which coordinate disaster operations — are experienced in catastrophes, have well trained staff and will do fine, such as Texas and Florida, Fugate said. But it’s the poorer states that worry the experts.

The feds often pick up the entire bill in big disasters and most of it in smaller ones. In the Trump administration, disaster declarations have been denied or delayed. When disaster declarations were issued for nine states last week, some had been pending for two months and others were only partially approved.

“We’ve just relied on FEMA for so much for so long and not knowing who’s going to fill the gap and how we’re going to fill it is really scary,” said University at Albany emergency management professor Jeannette Sutton.

Hurricane center dodges NOAA cuts

NOAA, the parent agency of the National Weather Service, has undergone a series of dramatic job cuts, with some people then reinstated. A sizable chunk of the weather service’s 121 local field offices as of late March had vacancy rates of more than 20%, what’s seen by outsiders as a critical level of understaffing. Local weather offices are crucial in helping people translate national warnings into what to do locally.

“It should be all hands on deck and we’re being hollowed out,” former NWS director Louis Uccellini said.

But the National Hurricane Center, which tracks and warns of hurricanes in the Atlantic, Pacific and Caribbean, has been spared. Acting NOAA Administrator Laura Grimm, National Weather Service Director Ken Graham and National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said the agency is prepared for the season with the Miami-based storm center fully staffed and so are the planes that fly into storms.

For the first time this year, the hurricane center will incorporate artificial intelligence into forecasting because it has shown to improve predictions generally, Brennan said.

“Our services have never been better,” Graham said. “Our ability to serve this country has never been better. And it will be this year as well.”

But beyond the hurricane center, weather balloons launches have been curtailed because of lack of staffing. In some places, balloon launches have dropped from twice a day to once a day.

NOAA hopes to get more balloons launched if needed, Brennan said.

Data from the balloons is crucial for understanding steering currents and needed for forecasts, Uccellini said. He said when hurricanes threatened during his tenure he would order the launch of several extra balloons in the Great Plains to help figure out if storms would hit the United States.

“Hurricane forecasts, I’m expecting not to be as accurate this year because of that lack of balloon data,? said former NOAA meteorologist Jeff Masters, now at Yale Climate Connections.

AUSTIN – The Baptist News Global reports Texans will sue once Gov. Greg Abbott signs a bill requiring Ten Commandments displays in public school classrooms, three national civil liberties groups said May 29. The announcement came a day after state senators voted to approve an amended version of Senate Bill 10 passed by the House 82-46 a few days earlier. The Senate passed the bill in March but had to vote again after the House added a provision requiring the state, instead of school districts, to pay for legal challenges. Abbott urged legislatures to pass the GOP-drafted measure: “Let’s get this bill to my desk. I’ll make it law.”

When he does, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation said they will jointly sue to overturn the law slated to go into effect in the 2025-2026 school year. The bill requires Ten Commandments displays of no less than 16-by-20 inches with a “typeface that is legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom in which the poster or framed copy is displayed.” The law also mandates use of a particular Protestant version of the Decalogue in the displays. “SB-10 is blatantly unconstitutional. We will be working with Texas public school families to prepare a lawsuit to stop this violation of students’ and parents’ First Amendment rights,” the legal groups said. The decision on what to believe or not to believe, and how to instruct children in matters of faith, should be left to families and their congregations, the groups said. “Government officials have no business intruding on these deeply personal religious matters. SB-10 will subject students to state-sponsored displays of the Ten Commandments for nearly every hour of their public education. It is religiously coercive and interferes with families’ right to direct children’s religious education.” There is plenty of legal precedent to back up a case against SB-10, the groups added. A 1980 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Stone v. Graham struck down a Kentucky law mandating classroom Ten Commandment displays even if the materials are purchased with private donations.

AUSTIN – The Dallas Morning News reports public school educators in Texas are set to reclaim flexibility over how they punish students who bring e-cigarettes onto campus under legislation sent to the governor this week. That change — along with giving administrators more leeway to suspend young kids — is part of a broader rewrite of Texas’ school discipline code that won final passage on Wednesday. The legislation received more than two-thirds support in both the House and the Senate and will take effect in time for students attending summer school. Several North Texas superintendents have pressed for the legislation for months, saying teachers need better tools to maintain order in their classrooms and more leeway over how to address vapes, one of the most common reasons students are disciplined.

House Bill 6, by state Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Allen, waters down a 2023 law that required students caught with vapes to be sent to off-campus disciplinary alternative schools. There were more than 32,000 violations last year. The mandate led to over-crowded disciplinary campuses and a uniformly harsh approach to children who may need help with nicotine addiction. Committee testimony included the stories of young children who got in serious trouble after they accidentally brought an older sibling’s vape onto campus. Educators have long urged lawmakers to revamp school discipline laws, detailing horror stories about suffering injuries on the job from violent students. In a poll cited by the state’s 2023 Teacher Vacancy Task Force report, nearly half of educators listed discipline and safe working conditions as a top concern. Education justice advocates cautioned against a return to zero-tolerance discipline that led to disproportionately high numbers of Black children and those with disabilities being punished – saying that exclusionary discipline is detrimental to a child’s development as well as the school climate. Lawmakers watered down or eliminated some of the most stringent proposals under consideration, including a provision that would have involved civil courts in serious disciplinary cases.

AUSTIN – The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that a school finance bill that includes teacher pay raises is headed to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The Texas House on May 29 accepted Senate changes to House Bill 2, which directs $8.5 billion to public schools. The vote was 122-13. Rep. Brad Buckley, a Salado Republican and the bill’s author, outlined the legislation as approved by the Senate on May 23. He said it directs $4.2 billion to teacher salaries through a new teacher retention allotment “designed to reflect the value of experience in the teaching profession and offer educators the opportunity to pursue teaching as a career that can support their families.” The raises would take effect in the 2025-2026 school year, according to the lieutenant governor’s office. Teachers will see the following raises from the allotment in districts with more than 5,000 students:

$2,500 for teachers with three to four years of experience. $5,000 for teachers with five or more years of experience. In smaller districts with fewer than 5,000 students, the teacher pay raises are: $4,000 for teachers with three to four years of experience. $,8000 for teachers with five or more years of experience. The bill sets aside $500 million in flexible funding for non-administrative staff pay raises, such as entry-level teachers, counselors, librarians, nurses, custodians and bus drivers, Buckley said. Buckley said other funding initiatives include: $677 million for early learning programs. $430 million for school safety funding. An $850 million increase for special education. $200 million in charter facilities funding. A $300 million increase in an allotment for small and mid-sized schools. $153 million for career and technical education. $135 million for teacher preparation and certification initiatives. The bill also directs $1.3 billion to schools, Buckley said. Districts get $106 per student for expenses that include transportation, costs related to retired teachers, utilities, property and casualty insurance, health insurance and employee benefits, according to the bill.

BEAUMONT, Texas – Two men who robbed a Beaumont convenience store and killed the clerk have been sentenced to over 30 years in federal prison for firearms violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Jay R. Combs.

Keandre Marquis Robinson, 20, of Beaumont, pleaded guilty to possessing and discharging a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence resulting in death and was sentenced to 405 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Marcia Crone on May 30, 2025. Larry Nathaniel Hagan, 28, of Houston, also pleaded guilty to the same charges and was sentenced to 420 months in federal prison by Judge Crone.

According to information presented in court, on December 29, 2023, Robinson and Hagan were wearing masks and brandishing semi-automatic pistols when they entered the Kris Food Mart located on Gulf Street in Beaumont. Robinson quickly forced the clerk behind the counter and demanded cash while Hagan guarded the front door. Seconds later, Robinson shot the clerk two times in the chest, killing him. Robinson grabbed cigarettes from behind the counter and fled with Hagan. No cash was taken.

Later that night, the Beaumont Police Department posted images from the robbery to social media and a tip identified Robinson. Police detained Robinson about three hours after the robbery as he was leaving his residence just a few blocks from the store. Robinson later confessed to his role in the robbery and killing but would not identify Hagan.

Detectives searched Robinson’s phone and discovered text messages with Hagan related to the robbery. The texts began on December 28 at 10:15 a.m. and ended a few minutes after the robbery. During the conversation, Robinson and Hagan planned to rob the store to “get some money.” In one text, Robinson told Hagan that he would “knock the clerk’s top” to eliminate any“lose [sic] ends…”. The conversation ended on December 29 at 10:07 p.m. (approximately 4 minutes after the shooting). In that text, Hagan told Robinson to “stay in the house for some days”.

“The despicable killing committed by Robinson and Hagan has caused unimaginable pain and loss to the victim’s loved ones and damaged the fabric of our society,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Jay R. Combs. “We can never undue the pain that the victim’s loved ones have endured, but we hope this outcome provides them with some measure of closure. The lengthy sentences that were meted out today reflect the gravity of the brazen and senseless crime committed by Robinson and Hagan.”

“This case shows the importance of collaboration between our officers, our federal partners, and the community that helped us identify the suspect so quickly,” said Beaumont Police Chief Tim Ocnaschek. “The shooter had already committed an aggravated robbery a year before and was back on the streets just weeks before this murder. The second suspect came to our city with a violent past. While no sentence can bring back the innocent life that was lost, taking these dangerous criminals off the streets for decades makes our community safer and sends a strong message about consequences.”

“Keandre Robinson’s text messages with Larry Hagan, plotting the slaughter of an unsuspecting store clerk, leave no doubt their only ‘plan’ was to kill,” said Douglas Williams, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Houston. “This was not a robbery gone wrong; it was a cold-blooded, premeditated execution. Thanks to the exceptional partnership between FBI Beaumont and the Beaumont Police Department, these savage criminals will now endure the full consequences of murdering an innocent man.”

Robinson was indicted by a federal grand jury on February 7, 2024. Hagan, who was at large until April 24, 2024 when he was arrested in New Orleans by the U.S. Marshals Service, was added to the indictment by the grand jury on May 1, 2024.

This case was investigated by the Beaumont Police Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshals Service, and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney John B. Ross.