Today is
Monday May 12, 2025
PLANO â According to a press release from the office of Acting U.S. Attorney Abe McGlothin, Jr., a Sherman convicted felon has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for a firearms violation in the Eastern District of Texas.
Mouaidad Mohamad, 30, plead guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm was sentenced to 180 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Sean D. Jordan on May 9, 2025.
According to information presented in court, on August 5, 2022, law enforcement officers responded to a report of shots fired in Sherman. They discovered that Mohamad had fired two shots from the window of a vehicle before forcing his girlfriend to drive away from the scene. Mohamad was located later in the day in the same vehicle, and taken into custody. Further investigation revealed Mohamad to be a convicted felon having several state felony convictions including robbery and burglary of a habitation. As a convicted felon, Mohamad is prohibited by federal law from owning or possessing firearms or ammunition.
This case was prosecuted as part of the joint federal, state, and local Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) Program, the centerpiece of the Department of Justiceâs violent crime reduction efforts. PSN is an evidence-based program proven to be effective at reducing violent crime. Through PSN, a broad spectrum of stakeholders work together to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in the community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. As part of this strategy, PSN focuses enforcement efforts on the most violent offenders and partners with locally based prevention and reentry programs for lasting reductions in crime.
This case was investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Sherman Police Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney William R. Tatum.
LONGVIEW – Our news partner KETK reports that this May, Christus Good Shepherd Medical Center is recognizing National Stroke Awareness month by bringing attention to the risk factors and prevention methods that are associated with the disease.
According to local medical professionals a stroke is defined as a disruption of blood flow due to the blockage of an artery most commonly caused by a blood clot. Joe Bowers, the stroke medical director at Christus Good Shepherd Medical Center, said that about 85% of strokes are labeled as ischemic strokes and the remaining 15% are considered hemorrhagic strokes.
Bowers described how damaging a stroke could be to the brain. âFor every minute that youâre having a stroke youâre losing millions of brain cells. That varies depending on the size of the stroke and what part. The longer you go, the more the brain is being affected,â said Bowers. âWithin the first few hours thereâs this window where those brain cells are kind of stunned but theyâre salvageable. After the first few hours those brain cells typically donât recover. So the quicker we can intervene, the more likely we can salvage more brain tissue that hasnât been permanently injured. Read the rest of this entry »
RAINS COUNTY – An East Texas judge is accused of threatening a defendant, according to a report from our news partner KETK.
A lawsuit filed in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas, alleges that Justice of the Peace Jenkins Franklin threatened Coby Wiebe to enter a guilty plea in a criminal case over which he had no jurisdiction, saying, âI heard you have a problem with me, boy. You take that deal, boy â or dead men canât testify.â Two days later, the defendant entered a no-contest plea in a felony case.
Wiebe alleges that the threat made in October 2023 is part of a broader pattern of misconduct that Franklin exhibited and went unchecked by county officials, leading to a Monell claim against the county. A Monell claim is based on a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that allows a person to sue local governments for constitutional violations. Read the rest of this entry »
LULING â Just six minutes from 5,700-person townâs historic city center, where an old oil museum still nods to the boom days, the ground groans as oil workers pull steel tubing â each piece is longer than a bus â out of a well drilled in 1983 that stopped pumping profits last year. Rain pours on this quiet Texas field, but the crew doesnât stop their steady pace.
The job has become all too familiar. Theyâre sealing one of thousands of unplugged orphaned oil and gas wells scattered across the state â abandoned holes left behind by companies that went bankrupt or just walked away. The last company to own this particular well was Geomeg Energy Operating Co., an Aransas Pass-based oil and gas company.
This March project was a snapshot of what plugging a well looks like: part routine, part roulette. Sometimes workers find corroded cement casings, pressurized gas, or unexpected debris that can turn a cleanup into a days- or weeks-long job.
âEven the simplest well can take time,â said Nicholas Harrel, a state managed plugger with the Texas Railroad Commission.
From the air, the wells look like pinpricks across the Texas landscape. But on the ground, they can erupt like geysers, leak methane, and threaten water supplies with toxic chemicals like hydrogen sulfide, benzene and arsenic.
Abandoned oil wells are piling up across Texas, posing a growing environmental threat and saddling taxpayers with cleanup costs that have already reached tens of millions of dollars. In West Texas, at least eight orphaned wells have blown out since late 2024, spewing brine, a salty liquid laden with chemicals from drilling, and toxic gas. One leaked for more than two months before it could be capped. Another has created a 200-foot-wide sinkhole.
âWe have more orphan wells coming on than we are plugging,â Railroad Commission Chair Christi Craddick said. âWe’ve exceeded our plugging numbers every year, but we still have more orphan wells that keep coming.â
Whoâs responsible for cleaning up these wells, and what happens if Texas falls behind? Here’s what to know.
Orphan wells are oil, gas, or injection wells with no clear owner â either because the company went bankrupt or disappeared. These wells have been inactive for at least 12 months, meaning the wells do not produce oil or natural gas. Some of them are unplugged.
Texas has nearly 8,900 orphan wells, according to the Railroad Commissionâs most recent list. Many are concentrated in oil-rich areas like the Permian Basin, including Reeves, Crockett, and Pecos counties. Pecos has more than 600 of them â the most of any county. Frio County, southwest of San Antonio, follows with close to 500 orphan wells.
Many were plugged with inappropriate materials or using practices that are now obsolete. Older wells â especially those drilled before the 1950s â are more likely to have been abandoned and documentation on who last owned a well can be hard to find.
The Railroad Commission of Texas, the stateâs oil and gas regulator, is responsible for ensuring that operators plug wells properly.
Once a well stops producing oil or gas, operators are supposed to plug their own wells within 12 months. But when they donât â in some cases because they went bankrupt â the responsibility can shift to the state.
The agency then evaluates how dangerous the orphan well is â to the environment and public safety â and places the well on a list to be plugged by contractors the agency hires.
The Luling well was added to the Railroad Commissionâs list in October 2024 â one of five wells scheduled for plugging in the area.
A big concern is air pollution, particularly methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and accelerates climate change. These wells often leak methane, as well as hydrogen sulfide â a toxic colorless gas that smells like rotten eggs. This gas is especially dangerous: it can cause headaches, dizziness and at high concentrations can be fatal.
For years, experts and ranchers have warned about the rising threat that unplugged wells pose to rivers, lakes and groundwater when they leak oil, gas, drilling fluids, and fracking wastewater, also known as âproduced waterâ a toxic mix of salt, hydrocarbons, arsenic, radium and other naturally occurring chemicals. Unplugged wells can create pathways for those chemicals to migrate into groundwater zones.
A spokesperson with the Railroad Commission said they are unaware of any cases of groundwater contamination from orphan wells in Texas.
The risks arenât just slow-moving â some are explosive. The common industry practice of injecting the massive amounts of fracking wastewater into deep wells can put pressure on underground geological formations. In some cases this pressure has led to increased earthquakes. In other cases, researchers have linked injections to well blowouts â sudden eruptions of water and gas that migrate underground until they hit an old well and burst from the earth.
Blowouts can happen in any well. However, orphan wells and older, plugged wells are less likely to withstand the pressure and blow. Last year in the West Texas town of Toyah, a well erupted and spewed a foul-smelling, hydrogen-sulfide-laced plume that took 19 days to contain. Residents had headaches and wore masks to protect themselves.
Harrel, the Railroad Commission well plugger, said that while the Luling well is a ânon-emergencyâ well, meaning it did not pose an immediate threat, it was still a concern because fluid was rising in the well and could eventually threaten groundwater.
The Luling well is located in a field called Spiller known to have higher hydrogen sulfide levels. A 2024 study found that at least 20 wells in a Luling oilfield were releasing dangerous amounts of hydrogen sulfide gas. Residents report smells as far as Austin â 50 miles away.
The Railroad Commission operates a State Managed Plugging Program, which is partly funded by the Oil and Gas Regulation and Cleanup Fund that receives bonds, enforcement penalties and permitting fees paid by operators. However, critics say those funds often fall short of actual cleanup costs.
The agency has plugged more than 46,000 wells through the state plugging program since its inception in 1984. The commission said it has budgeted $22.75 million a year to plug 1,000 wells a year. For the past five fiscal years the agency has plugged an average of 1,352 wells per year.
But that money doesnât go nearly far enough. The cost to plug just two emergency wells this fiscal year hit $9 million, nearly 40% of the stateâs entire annual plugging budget, according to Craddick, the agency chair.
To keep up, the commission has increasingly relied on federal support. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, passed by the U.S. Congress in 2021, included a $4.7 billion nationwide injection to plug orphan wells on public and private lands. Through that law, Texas received $25 million in 2022 from the U.S. Department of the Interior and another $80 million in early 2024 to plug orphan wells. Combined with state funding, those dollars helped plug over 2,400 wells in 2023â24. However, federal funds are uncertain with changes in administrations.
Meanwhile, plugging costs have also skyrocketed. Just a few years ago, Craddick said it cost around $15,000 to plug a well. Today, the average is closer to $57,000, and that number jumps dramatically for wells with high water flow or hazardous leaks. For example, a blowout near Odessa in late 2023 took more than two months and $2.5 million to contain and plug.
The RRC warned last year that it can no longer sustain the growing cost and scale of the problem and requested an additional $100 million in emergency funding from lawmakers â about 44% of its entire two-year budget â just to keep up with the backlog, tackle urgent sites and cope with rising costs due to inflation. Lawmakers are considering this as part of the overall state budget.
The costs of plugging a well vary by region and are based on how deep the wells are, according to Harell. While the Luling wellâs cost has not been finalized, according to the commissionâs cost calculation information, the wellâs cost will be about $24,000.
The agency prioritizes wells that are actively leaking or pose immediate threats to the environment, groundwater and people. They might be releasing toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide, flooding land with contaminated water, or dangerously pressurized. These wells must be plugged right away, regardless of the cost, according to the commission.
While Craddick noted at a hearing in February the state had 15 priority wells, a commission spokesperson said the number of priority wells fluctuates every day, with typically zero to five wells classified as emergency at any given time.
âIf the fluid level in the well, the hydrocarbons and produce water in the well, gets up too close to that freshwater aquifer then it imposes a higher risk to contaminating that groundwater aquifer, so we wanna make sure that we get to those as wells first,â said Travis Baer, an oil and gas division district director at the Railroad Commission.
The Luling well is categorized as a 2H priority well â still high risk but not a full-blown emergency.
At the Luling field, red trucks and equipment surround a rusted pump jack, a mechanical device used to extract oil from an underground well to the surface. One of the trucks has two tanks that hold cement, another carries a cement mixer and a pressure pump.
The process starts with a site assessment: Crews glance at hand-held devices hanging from their neck to test for dangerous gases like hydrogen sulfide and determine the wind direction so they can position themselves upwind. Once the site is secure, three workers wearing hard hats remove equipment inside the 2,000-foot-deep well â steel rods and tubing used to carry oil or gas to the surface.
Almost two hours later, the workers were still pulling out tubing.
Baer, the division district director, said these materials are often salvaged and sold to help offset plugging costs.
Next, they assess the wellâs structural condition and measure how high fluids have risen inside.
Once the well is fully evaluated, crews identify the underground zones that once produced oil or gas â known as perforations. A cast iron bridge plug (mechanical plug) is dropped down the hole, tightly sealed to provide a solid base and prevent fluids from leaking.
âThis gives us a permanent bottom, it stops gas migration into our cement plug. So we know we’re getting the best plug on bottom to seal off the perforations in the zone,â said Randy Niedorf, a well plugger with the company Bulldog Oil Well Service.
Then, cement is pumped deep into the well. It flows to the bottom and rises up around the casing, sealing the wellbore and blocking any potential pathways for gas or liquid to migrate. Multiple cement plugs are installed along the wellâs depth, including near groundwater layers, to ensure complete isolation of oil and water zones.
The final step is land restoration. Once the well is sealed, crews clean up the site. The Luling well was plugged in two days and all five wells in the area were plugged in about a week.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
AUSTIN – Texas House lawmakers debated gun rights and voter protections Wednesday afternoon related to a bill that would allow election judges to carry a weapon inside a polling place at any time.
House Bill 1128, by Rep. Carrie Isaac, R-Dripping Springs, allows an election judge, early voting clerk, or deputy early voting clerk who is serving as an election judge to carry a concealed handgun at an early voting or Election Day polling place as a means of protection for themselves and others. House lawmakers passed the bill 85 to 57 on Thursday, advancing it to the Senate.
This bill would codify a decision made by Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2018, where he ruled that since district judges can carry firearms to polling places and election judges had been given the authority of district judges, they should also be able to.
??Paxtonâs opinion explains why a court would take his side in the decision, but it was not legally binding.
Election judges, who are generally civilians appointed by local party officials to head up a team of poll workers, have many duties, including settling election disputes and keeping the peace at the polls.
Isaac told lawmakers this bill was needed because the elections director for the Texas Secretary of State reported that during the 2024 election, workers endured bomb threats and physical attacks, including thrown water bottles. She said itâs becoming harder to retain and recruit poll workers because of this climate, so protections must be put in place at polling locations.
âSome workers even quit mid-election out of fear for their safety,â Isaac said from the House floor. âThese are not isolated incidents. They are happening across Texas, and our workers are mostly volunteers giving their time to serve their communities. If we expect them to uphold the integrity of our elections, we must do our part.â
Critics of the bill questioned whether allowing an election judge to carry a weapon could be considered dangerous to the voting process.
âDo you really think arming someone with a firearm to combat someone with a water bottle is not escalating the situation?â Rep. Maria Luisa Flores, D-Austin, asked.
Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins, D-San Antonio, asked why law enforcement couldnât be at the polling locations to hold the peace instead of expecting civilian election judges to carry a weapon and potentially have to fire on someone and disrupt the entire voting process.
“Unfortunately, it takes time for law enforcement to arrive, and that is why we need someone there at all times for protection,” Isaac responded. â…Your concern is about the election. My concern is about an innocent person getting hurt.â
Discussion about intimidation also occurred as Flores mentioned a case in Beaumont in 2022, where a federal judge issued an emergency order prohibiting Jefferson County election workers from scrutinizing the identities of Black voters and, along with poll watchers, from shadowing Black people at voting stations.
âI think this type of conduct, if combined with a gun, is detrimental,â said Rep. Vikki Goodwin, D-Austin.
Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, pointed out that the bill isnât malicious.
This bill would not change current laws banning the general public from bringing firearms to a polling location, and it would only allow election judges and those designated by them to carry guns, and not all poll workers, said Isaac.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
AUSTIN – The Texas House agreed late Thursday to let the governor determine the countries whose residents, governments and other entities could be banned from buying property here.
Members granted the governor such power when they amended Senate Bill 17, whose real estate sales restrictions were limited to countries that the U.S. national director of intelligence has designated as national security threats. Currently, that list includes only China, Iran, North Korea and Russia.
After giving the governor the ability to expand the list of restricted countries, the House then gave SB 17 preliminary approval in a 85-60 vote. The bill now heads back to the Senate.
State Rep. Nate Schatzline, the Republican from Fort Worth who introduced the amendment, said the goal was to make sure that any threats to Texas could quickly be addressed.
âOur governor can act swiftly rather than waiting for a year for that to be added into the [director of national intelligence’s] designated country list,â he said.
That amendment drew rebuke from Democrats.
âThis gives the governor unfettered power to add whatever country he wants to in this bill,â said state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of House Democratic Caucus. âItâs kind of dangerous to say one person can decide whatever country he or she wants to add to this without any oversight, without any controls â this is the definition of overreach.â
Schatzline’s amendment also allows the governor to add âtransnational criminal organizationsâ to the list of entities barred from buying Texas property. Schatzline pointed to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as an example.
State Rep. Cole Hefner, the Mt. Pleasant Republican carrying SB 17 in the lower chamber, described the bill during Thursdayâs hourslong debate as âsecuring Texas land and natural resources and making sure that this precious resource does not fall prey to adversarial nations and oppressive regimes that wish to do us harm.â
The billâs advancement came over opposition from Democrats who are concerned that it could be used to potentially discriminate against Asian Americans.
The bill will need one more House vote before it goes back to the Senate. The upper chamber previously approved a version of the bill, but House members amended several key portions of it Thursday.
The Senateâs previous version would have exempted anyone or any entity that leased the property to someone else for under 100 years. The House limited that exemption to property leased to someone else for one year or less. Rep. Mitch Little called the 100-year lease exemption âa loophole that you could drive a Mack truck through.â
The House also previously amended the bill to exempt lawful permanent residents.
But Democrats failed to make changes to the bill several times Thursday. Their failed amendments included provisions that would have exempted visa holders such as medical students and researchers, performers and athletes. They also raised concerns that the law could hurt the Texas economy.
SB 17 is Brenham Republican Sen. Lois Kolkhorstâs second attempt at limiting who can buy property in Texas. Similar legislation she authored in 2023 died in the House. In committee hearings this year, she described the legislation as protecting Texasâ assets from âhostile nations.â
âThis is a matter of national security,â she said in March. âTexas must act now to protect our land, food sources, water, and natural resources.â
A batch of new, more conservative lawmakers were elected to the House last year, giving new life to legislation that struggled in previous sessions. Chief among those measures are the creation of school vouchers.
If passed, the bill goes into effect Sept. 1 and would only apply to purchases or acquisitions after that date.
It would require the attorney generalâs office to create a process to investigate possible violations and refer the matter to a district court. If the court finds a violation, it would be authorized to order the purchaser to divest from the property either by selling it or terminating the lease, according to the House Research Organizationâs most recent analysis of the bill. The court also would be required to refer the matter for potential criminal offenses.
The amount of Texas property owned by entities from outside the U.S. is not tracked in detail, aside from agricultural land. But Joshua Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law, said it is likely a very small fraction. In the U.S. overall, Chinese investors own less than 1% of total foreign-held acreage, according to 2021 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Investors from Russia, Iran and North Korea collectively own less than 3,000 acres.
But to Abraham George, chair of the Texas Republican Party, 1% is too much â which is why the bill was a party priority.
Rep. Angie Chen Button, who was only the second Asian American woman to serve in the Legislature and whose parents fled from China, also spoke in support of the bill Thursday night, saying the bill aims to âprotect our freedom, liberty and national security.â She introduced a similar bill last session.
Some Asian Texans are concerned the bill would create animosity and âstate-sanctioned racial profiling,â said Lily Trieu, executive director of the civic engagement group Asian Texans for Justice.
The bill doesnât prohibit purchases of land based on national origin, which would violate federal civil rights laws. Instead, it prohibits people based on their permanent residence.
Wu, who immigrated to the United States from China as a child, said the bill could impact not just Chinese people in Texas, but members of all Asian communities in the state.
âNobody knows the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean, right? Nobody knows what your immigration status is,â he said in an interview. âWhen they discriminate against you ⊠when they look for people to assault, they don’t really care what you are. They care that you have Asian face.â
Trieu said the groupâs No. 1 concern is that individuals shouldnât be conflated with governments.
âJust like how no one here would want to travel to another country and be held individually accountable for what Governor Abbott does or what President Donald Trump does,â she said.
âThese individuals should not be held accountable for what the government of their national origin does, or what their ideology is, or what, you know, the government does as an entity.â
Trieu said the group was formed to engage Asian Texans in civic participation such as voting, but this bill galvanized people into getting involved in legislation.
Wu expects the bill is just the start of that. And even with its passage, he sees it as a loss for the Republican Party because it could push Asian American voters to shift to the Democratic Party in the 2026 midterm elections.
âI think the Republicans are heading into gale force winds in 2026 if they want to alienate and make enemies of an entire community who for a large part has stayed out of politics,â he said in an interview.
DALLAS (AP) â Texas lawmakers hope to rein in homeownersâ rising insurance bills even as they acknowledge thereâs only so much they can do to tackle costs.
Legislators have advanced bills to limit how much insurance companies can hike rates and help homeowners make their homes more insurable. Theyâve also sought to compel insurers to be more upfront with homeowners when they decide to yank coverage, or deny it in the first place.
Texans pay some of the highest insurance premiums in the country. On average, Texas homeowners saw their insurance rates spike by double digits in recent years â a far cry from the previous decade when such increases were unheard of. Homeownersâ insurance rates climbed by nearly 19% in 2024, according to the Texas Department of Insurance, slightly down from more than 21% the previous year.
A number of factors have spurred insurance costs in recent years, insurance experts say. For one, property values in Texas surged amid the stateâs population boom â raising the cost to ensure homes and businesses. Climate change has intensified extreme weather events like hailstorms, hurricanes, and winter freezes and made severe weather more common. With the stateâs population growth, more people have moved into the path of that severe weather. Higher labor and construction material costs have driven up the cost of repairing damage when severe weather events damage a home.
Buying homeowners insurance isnât an optional cost. Lenders require homebuyers to purchase insurance to obtain a mortgage. Even if a home is paid off, insurance experts say itâs unwise to go without coverage in case disaster strikes.
Even as lawmakers look for ways to tackle the insurance crisis, they acknowledge many of the drivers of insurance costs are beyond lawmakersâ control, they say.
âWe canât control the weather, we canât control inflation,â state Rep. Tom Oliverson, a Cypress Republican behind one such proposal, told a House committee last month. âI canât control the availability of building materials, and I canât control how the houses that are already built were built, what standard they were built to.â
And they find themselves in the position of trying to rein in exorbitant insurance costs without scaring off insurers and cratering the stateâs insurance market.
One proposal by state Sen. Charles Schwertner, R-Georgetown, aims to give policyholders a check against steep rate increases. In Texas, insurers can file proposed rate increases with the Texas Department of Insurance, the stateâs insurance regulator, and implement the new rates right away. If the agency later decides the increase is unreasonable, they can disapprove it.
Senate Bill 1643, which has cleared the Senate but awaits a committee hearing in the House, would require the insurance department to approve any rate increase above 10% before it can go into effect.
âAs companies make significant rate changes, it is incumbent upon the Legislature to ensure that the regulatory environment is giving these filings the level of scrutiny they necessitate,â Schwertner said ahead of a Senate vote on the bill in April.
That proposal has drawn pushback from the insurance industry. Capping rate increases does nothing to address the underlying drivers of the rising cost of providing insurance, said Beaman Floyd, who heads the Texas Coalition for Affordable Insurance Solutions, a group that represents major insurance companies including Allstate, State Farm and USAA. Insurers might pursue lower rate increases than they otherwise would have if they worry regulators wouldnât approve larger ones, Floyd said â leaving them with mounting financial liabilities that could lead to policy cancellations because insurers canât afford to provide coverage.
âThatâs not good for consumers,â Floyd said.
Requiring the state insurance regulator to review rate increases above 10% doesnât necessarily mean the regulator will automatically reject those increases, Schwertner said in a statement. The bill âsimply seeks to curb unchecked rate filing and review practices,â he said.
Consumer advocates argue the stateâs current system doesnât provide a real check on insurers â one that Schwertnerâs proposal could theoretically help create. But they also worry insurers will thwart the intent of the law simply by asking for multiple rate increases, a practice the bill doesnât cap. Ware Wendell, executive director of the consumer rights group Texas Watch, posited that an insurer could theoretically file a 9% increase one month and seek the same increase the next month.
âInsurance companies could come in and nibble,â Wendell said.
The Texas Department of Insurance would still require insurers to justify their rate increases even if they filed multiple increases a year, Schwertner said. If those increases arenât justified, the state could still reject the increase, he said.
Insurers and consumer groups agree on some proposals. House Bill 1576, authored by Oliverson, would create a state grant program to help homeowners retrofit their homes to withstand hurricanes and windstorms, modeled after a similar program in Alabama. The idea is that insurers will be more likely to insure a home if itâs hardened against severe weather, and the cost of insuring that home will be lower.
âItâs a very unique way for us to basically drive the cost of insurance down by encouraging folks â not mandating, this isnât a mandate â to rebuild your home to a higher standard that experiences less risk and less cost,â Oliverson told the House Insurance Committee in April.
That bill cleared the House late last month. The Senate has yet to take action. How much money the state would spend on the program depends on the bill clearing both chambers, and on the outcome of budget negotiations between the House and Senate.
Lawmakers have considered other ideas. The state insurance department is overseen by a single commissioner appointed by the governor. Another Schwertner proposal would expand that to three commissioners, one of which would be required to have expertise in consumer advocacy. Lawmakers have also advanced bills to prevent insurers from forcing consumers seeking homeowners insurance to also purchase auto insurance, and to require insurers to actively disclose why they may deny coverage to homeowners or cancel their policies.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) â A Texas man associated with a neo-Nazi group was convicted on Wednesday of posting threats to lynch and kill Nashville District Attorney General Glenn Funk after another group member was charged with attacking a downtown bar worker.
David Aaron Bloyed, 60, of Frost, Texas, was found guilty by a federal jury in Nashville of one count of communicating a threat in interstate commerce, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. He faces up to five years in prison at sentencing.
Bloyed was found to have posted a photograph of Funk with the caption, âGetting the rope,â and an emoji finger pointed towards Funkâs image. A second post included a drawing of a person hanging by the neck from a gallows, with the phrase, âThe âRope Listâ grew by a few more Nashville jews today.â Both included swastika symbols.
Funk was targeted after a group of white supremacist, antisemitic and neo-Nazi provocateurs came to Nashville last summer and began livestreaming antics for shock value â waving swastika flags through crowded streets, singing hate songs on the downtown courthouse steps, and even briefly disrupting a Metro Council meeting.
At one point, a fight broke out between a bar worker and a member of the group, who used metal flagpole with a swastika affixed to the top to hit the employee. The group member was charged with aggravated assault. The bar worker was also charged in the tussle.
âAntisemitic hate has no place in Nashville or anywhere, and this verdict shows these hateful threats for what they are: a crime,â Acting U.S. Attorney Robert E. McGuire for the Middle District of Tennessee, said in a news release.
GOLDEN OAKS – According to a report from our news partner KETK, a woman was attacked by a pack of dogs in Golden Oaks Wednesday night and had to be airlifted to a local hospital.
Around 8:41 p.m., Payne Springs Fire Rescue volunteers received a call about a woman who was attacked by a pack of dogs and experienced traumatic injuries, officials said. When volunteers arrived, they requested UT Health Air 1 launch to the Gun Barrel City Fire helicopter pad.
The womanâs condition is unknown at this time.
AUSTIN – Texas lawmakers want to help young learners who are lagging behind in math and reading, an early setback that threatens to derail their path to high school graduation.
More than half of third graders in the state are not at grade level in reading or math, meaning they lack the key foundational skills they need to thrive as learners.
Students who are behind in third grade rarely catch up, which can lead to serious consequences later in life. Research shows students who struggle to read by third grade are more likely to drop out of high school. Math proficiency is tied to economic mobility as an adult.
The Texas House gave final approval Wednesday to House Bill 123, which aims to provide struggling students extra learning support as early as kindergarten, before learning gaps compound.
âThe whole bill presupposesâŠthere’s nothing wrong with these children, but there was simply something wrong with what we were giving them,â state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, said from the House floor on Tuesday.
Last month, the Senate passed a similar bill, Senate Bill 2252. Members from both chambers are now expected to reconcile differences in their proposals in a closed-door conference committee.
The legislation would require districts to use literacy and numeracy screeners to identify students who are struggling early on. The screeners would assess students three times a year between pre-K and 3rd grade on skills like phonics, vocabulary and spelling. Those who are furthest behind would get extra tutoring in small group settings.
The Texas Education Agency would develop a screener that districts could use for free, though districts would be allowed to continue using their own screening methods.
Students are assessed on school readiness when they first enter kindergarten. After that, the state has limited visibility into literacy development until the third-grade STAAR test, with two dyslexia screenings currently acting as the only formal checkpoints.
“We simply cannot afford to wait past third grade to intervene,â said Amber Shields with the education policy nonprofit Commit Partnership, in testimony before lawmakers last month.
Both the House and Senate bills would require schools to share the screening results with parents. Advocates say the information could improve parent engagement and encourage them to help build their childrenâs skills after school.
Gabe Grantham, an education policy adviser for the think tank Texas 2036, said the information from the screenings could bridge discrepancies between how students are performing in school and how their parents think they are performing.
The legislation would also expand educatorsâ access to math and reading instructional materials. Teachers often work unpaid hours to complete training known as math and reading academies, which give them the tools to help build studentsâ skills in those subjects. HB 123 would give districts funding to pay teachers who take those courses after their regular workday.
The efforts to reduce financial barriers for teachers to take this training come at a time when lawmakers are also trying to limit uncertified teachers from leading classes in foundational skills like math and reading. School districts around the state have increasingly leaned on uncertified teachers to lead classrooms as theyâve struggled to hire and retain trained instructors.
The Texas legislation mimics literacy interventions in Louisiana and Mississippi, states that have made significant leaps in student achievement in recent years. Mississippi fourth-grade reading scores soared â a phenomenon referred to as the Mississippi Miracle â after the state implemented regular literacy screening and provided intensive literacy training to K-3 teachers.
Meanwhile, Texasâ fourth-grade reading scores ranked 37th in the nation, even as students have started to rebound from learning disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
HENDERSON COUNTY – A man arrested in Gun Barrel City has been sentenced to life in prison after multiple grams of illegal drugs were found inside his vehicle, according to our news partner KETK.
Jeffrey Lee Sharp was arrested in October 2023 during a routine traffic stop. According to officials, during the stop an investigator smelled marijuana coming from Sharpâs car, which led him to conduct a probable cause search of the vehicle. During the search a clear baggie that contained multiple baggies with methamphetamine and a bag of marijuana.
During the court hearing, the jury heard testimony stated that Sharp was a habitual offender, which extended his sentence. Sharp was previously sentenced to 35 years in prison for delivery of a controlled substance and was on parole at the time of his arrest. Read the rest of this entry »
SMITH COUNTY – According to the Tyler Morning Telegraph, county officials are looking at future jail needs, but say there are no current plans to expand or seek bond funding.
County Judge Neal Franklin said the presentation of of a jail feasibility study is only to prepare for the future.
“This is something that I felt like we needed to present,” Franklin said. “There are no bond plans – let me make that really clear. There is no plan on putting a November bond election for any jail or anything in fact.”
The study looks at population growth, inmate trends, and the county’s current jail setup. Based on those findings, it projects future needs and how those could be met with new construction. The current capacity across the downtown and North Jail is 1,092 beds. According to the study, the county may need between 1,400 and 1,500 beds in the future. Read the rest of this entry »
AUSTIN – Fentanyl test strips are among the cheapest and easiest ways to prevent overdoses, but multiple attempts to legalize them â even with Gov. Greg Abbottâs support in the past â have failed in the Senate. This year, legislation to legalize these test strips faces similar challenges.
âI think that thereâs a different stream of thought that feels like if you give an inch, you give a mile, and that any sort of lessening of prohibition stance is sort of giving up and giving over to drug use,â said Katharine Neill Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice Universityâs Baker Institute for Public Policy.
House Bill 1644, by state Rep. Tom Oliverson, R-Cypress, would remove testing strips for fentanyl and xylazine, a veterinary sedative also known as âtranq,â from the list of banned drug paraphernalia. This bill passed unanimously in the House last month and is now pending in the Senate.
Fentanyl, a potent drug commonly mixed with other substances and has caused the deaths of more than 7,000 Texans in the last six years, is odorless and tasteless, making detection nearly impossible without specialized equipment.
This is why Oliverson called fentanyl testing strips a âmine detectorâ for a person trying to walk across a minefield.
The cost of fentanyl test strips can range from $10 to $30 for a box of 30. To use the strips, testers dissolve a small amount of a drug in water and then dip the strip into it. One line indicates fentanyl is present, and two lines indicate a negative result.
This is the second legislative session in a row that Oliverson has tried to get his bill passed. Both times, his legislation didnât get a committee hearing in the Senate. With less than four weeks left in the legislative session, his bill this session hasnât yet been considered in the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
Oliverson, in his speech from the House floor, suggested that Senate lawmakers fear that legalizing the strips would mean that people would start âusing drugs to their heartâs content safely.â
âI want every person in Texas who is struggling with addiction to get the help they need. But I canât fix that if they are dead,â Oliverson told lawmakers last month when his bill passed.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who oversees the Senate, did not return a request for comment nor did the criminal justice committee chair, Sen. Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton. Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, credited by drug policy advocates last legislative session for blocking fentanyl testing strips from a hearing, didnât comment on whether she supports legalization.
âThe structural nature of the Senate, where the lieutenant governor has the power to decide whether a bill gets a hearing or not, can be quite a big hurdle,â Harris said.
Travis County Judge Andy Brown said the delay in legalizing fentanyl testing strips is only costing lives with each passing year.
âOur fight against the number one cause of accidental death in Travis County is hampered by the fact that we havenât legalized fentanyl test strips in Texas,â Brown said.
Early last year, a rash of over 70 overdoses rocked Travis County in a span of three days, killing more than nine people. However, more deaths could have occurred if the county and the state hadnât made efforts to get overdose reversal drugs like Narcan and naloxone to the general public last legislative session.
To combat the growing number of fentanyl overdose deaths in Texas, state lawmakers in 2023 launched a $10 million fentanyl awareness campaign and plan to distribute doses of Narcan to every county in the state.
âI also get the sense that publicity campaigns that we have done and that the state has done have helped get the education out there, too,â Brown said.
Brown said Travis County, despite the harrowing encounter last year, saw a decline in fentanyl related deaths, dropping by 36%, from 279 in 2023 to 179 in 2024.
During this same period, deaths from fentanyl overdose statewide dropped 14%, to 5,070 in 2024.
âWe donât know yet if this is a long-term decline. Certainly, it’s an encouraging development that we hope to see continue,â Harris said, pointing out that 87,000 deaths are still a lot.
A dip doesnât mean a complete decline as the drug market is unpredictable. This is why drug policy advocates and others are clamoring for the legalization of drug testing strips, which are cheaper to stock than Narcan and can keep someone from using fentanyl in the first place.
In December 2022, Abbott announced his support for fentanyl testing strips as he believed the opioid crisis had gone too far. Attempts to contact Abbott to see if he still supports testing strips were not returned. Abbott did not respond to a request for comment on whether he still supports legalization.
âI think we would reduce the number of deaths that weâre seeing in the state of Texas if we just made test strips legal,â Brown said.
Maggie Luna, executive director of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance, an Austin-based nonprofit that does outreach and operates a drop-in center for people who might need Narcan, condoms, bandages, and more, has seen firsthand the demand for fentanyl testing strips.
Their organization canât legally buy testing strips but accepts tests donated to them from other states.
âPeople are always asking for fentanyl testing strips and xylazine test strips,â Luna said.
The Texas Harm Reduction Alliance has been on the front-lines of this fight against drug-related deaths, reversing more than 300 overdoses in 2024 alone with Narcan, Luna said.
If fentanyl use continues, Luna is concerned about it worsening because of federal funding cuts to substance abuse programs, Texas lawmakersâ attempt to ban intoxicating substances like hemp and kratom, and the economic downturn, which notoriously leads to spikes in drug usage.
âWe are going to start seeing people seeking drugs at the same time we are clawing back the money that we have for tools to keep people alive,â Luna said. âWe are heading to a period of death.â
Luna said legalizing test strips allows organizations like hers, which face an uncertain future, a cheap option to save lives.
âEvery overdose can be reversed if we are applying the right education and giving out the correct tools,â Luna said.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
ODESSA â Texas will need a lot more energy in the future.
Driven largely by demand from businesses such as data centers and the oil and gas industry, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the stateâs grid operator, predicts the stateâs energy needs will nearly double in six years.
State Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, worries ERCOT is not working with a full picture.
He told a legislative panel as much in February.
âWe do not have accurate load forecasting. No one knows if the forecast is real,â he said. Large companies, he added, are requiring ERCOT to plan âfor load growth at dramatically higher levels than experienced ever in the history of Texas, and frankly, ever in the history of the United States.â
And âwithout credible data, we run the risk of overbuilding, with high costs being passed on to consumers, or underbuilding, further exacerbating scarcity,â he said.
He believes his legislation, Senate Bill 6, will put restraints on the stateâs open-energy market, and help the grid plan for the future to save rate payers money and avoid another catastrophe when extreme weather strikes again.
The bill, which has already won Senate approval and is expected to start its journey in the Texas House Wednesday with a committee hearing, would place more requirements on businesses meant to help ERCOT better forecast the electricity needs. Businesses would also have to pay more in advance of operating.
While business groups have said they agree the grid needs more security, they believe Kingâs bill is too heavy-handed. They said some of his proposals wonât help ERCOTâs planning and put their operations at risk.
They want changes to the bill, such as removing language that would grant ERCOT the ability to disconnect power to major energy users during an emergency, and new rules on arrangements between power generators and companies.
Michael Jewell, an attorney who has represented large industrial companies on energy issues and policy, said Kingâs legislation will need to strike a balance between addressing the growth without scaring companies away.
âThis legislation is important to finding that balance, that we can bring these large loads into the ERCOT region, grow the Texas economy, and support the development of this technology,â he said. âBut we also want to be sure that we, as Texans, will continue to have reliable electricity.â
Kingâs bill only applies to industrial-sized facilities, or those needing more than 75 Megawatts.
Under the bill, businesses wanting to plug into the grid must disclose whether they have similar requests elsewhere in Texas or out of state. Companies must tell ERCOT if their backup generators can meet at least 50% of their power. During an emergency, ERCOT could instruct facilities to use that power, instead of the grid. Another provision allows ERCOT to shut off a facilityâs power in an emergency. ERCOT must give the facilities a dayâs notice.
Facilities sometimes negotiate directly with power generators, like gas-fired plants, to satisfy their electricity needs without connecting to the grid. The bill gives the Public Utility Commission, which regulates electricity and some water and wastewater, authority over such arrangements, allowing it to approve or reject them, in addition to 180 days of review.
Companies would also have to pay an electric, municipal utility or a cooperative at least $100,000 to study the transmission work necessary to transport electricity to their facilities. Companies must also demonstrate that they can afford to contribute to the construction of transmission lines and purchase any equipment or services.
The bill also directs the utility commission to determine how to better allocate transmission costs, including looking at peak demand, the point at which supply meets demand.
King acknowledged the strain on the stateâs power grid means more businesses are moving to Texas, something he supports.
âI want to make it very clear that while this load growth is a strain on the ERCOT grid, it is also an excellent opportunity for the state of Texas,â King said in February. âSo long as we manage it properly (and) not create reliability risks or pricing issues for everyday Texans.â
Groups consisting of the facilities King is targeting said parts of his proposals wonât benefit ERCOTâs efforts to make the grid reliable or lower prices.
Dan Diorio, a government affairs expert for the Data Center Coalition, a national group, said it is supportive of the goals the bill is trying to reach. But in its current form, the group said it has lingering concerns as the bill moves through the House, including a provision requiring companies to disclose information that he said is unnecessary for the grid, such as out-of-state requests for electricity. He said ERCOT can separate serious requests within Texas.
âThis is a highly competitive industry,â he said. âSo not only do we have competitive concerns about that, because this is proprietary information, but how is that going to inform the forecast correctly?â
He said diesel makes up most backup power generation, and is a fuel overseen by the federal government and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Forcing companies to run emergency generators could lead to air emissions violations and air pollution, Diorio said.
Diorio added that the information data centers collect and maintain â including from local and state authorities â could be put at risk when the system shuts down. Proposing to shut off power, even with a notice, could risk public safety, adding that the bill does not offer enough specificity regarding how the shut-off would be implemented.
Walt Baum, president of Powering Texans, a group representing natural gas power generators, said the bill imposes administrative requirements on agreements between power companies and facilities.
In this case, the company would pay the power generator directly for the needed electricity. Baum said a company could otherwise go directly to the grid, drawing out the same amount of electricity it would have gotten from the generator directly. The amount of energy used would not change.
âAnd the impact on the grid is the same,â he said.
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.
AUSTIN – After struggling for years to gain enough bipartisan support to tighten the stateâs bail laws, Texas Republicans appear closer than ever to achieving their elusive goal of amending the state Constitution to keep more defendants behind bars pretrial.
GOP leaders see the issue as a matter of life and death, arguing that stricter bail laws are needed to curb violent crime tied to defendants who are out on bond. Critics, led by civil rights groups and progressive Democrats, view the bail crackdown as an infringement of the civil liberties of defendants who are legally presumed innocent and an unfunded mandate to counties who could see their jail populations soar.
The push to stiffen Texasâ bail laws has been largely spearheaded by Gov. Greg Abbott, who has named the issue an emergency item for three straight sessions. But the effort has repeatedly stalled in the House, thwarted by Democrats who have killed GOP bail measures by running out the clock or denying the two-thirds support needed from both chambers to put a constitutional amendment before voters.
Fresh off a victory on school vouchers â his other top priority â Abbott has zeroed in on the bail measure, which he recently painted as one of the most important pieces of legislation this session.
âThere are thousands of bills that are working their way through the Legislature,â Abbott said in Houston last week. âNone of them have the deadly consequences as much as this legislation â to amend the Constitution to keep these deadly, dangerous, violent criminals off the streets.â
Lawmakers this session are actively negotiating a package that could win support from all 88 House Republicans and at least 12 Democrats, the minimum threshold to reach two-thirds of the 150-member House.
The measure is set to mirror past proposals that would have given judges the option to deny bail in a wider array of violent offenses. But the Houseâs lead negotiator said that for some cases, the measure could go even further by requiring judges to withhold bail, rather than giving them discretion to do so.
Under the state Constitution, defendants â who are legally presumed innocent â are largely guaranteed the right to pretrial release, except in limited circumstances, such as when charged with capital murder.
Automatically denying bail is a new proposal that has not appeared in any legislative drafts this session. It was a recent demand of Abbottâs, who abruptly called for the more far-reaching standard during his Houston stop last week.
Even with the stiffer policy on the table, lead negotiators on bail from both chambers expressed optimism about reaching an agreement that could win enough support to clear the House.
âWeâre close to an agreement,â Rep. John Smithee, R-Amarillo and chair of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, said in an interview Tuesday, adding that he was hopeful the package would move through his panel this week with less than a month of session left. âWeâve made a lot of progress. Weâve narrowed a lot of the issues down.â
Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston and the longtime sponsor of bail-related legislation in the upper chamber, said in a statement Monday that she was âoptimisticâ one of the measures would âsoon advance to the House floor for a record vote.â Huffmanâs bail amendments have routinely breezed through the Senate with bipartisan support, most recently passing the chamber on a 28-2 vote earlier this year.
At least some House Democrats are cautiously on board, though the situation remained fluid as of Tuesday afternoon without a compromise proposal for lawmakers to scour. Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston and chair of the House Democratic Caucus, told The Texas Tribune Tuesday that he anticipated reaching a âreasonableâ agreement lacking the âmost extremeâ proposals.
âItâs something our communities have been asking for for a while,â Wu said. âIâm expecting an agreement that probably the bulk of the body will vote for.â
The proposalâs momentum in the House this session reflects a yearslong shift in Texas away from efforts to curtail mass incarceration, reduce wealth-based detention and keep nonviolent offenders out of jail. Instead, under Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, state leaders have swerved toward a tough-on-crime approach to legislating, including through bills that would likely grow the stateâs incarcerated population, increase penalties for various crimes and exempt police from deadly conduct charges. And while they have failed to amend the Constitutionâs bail provisions, GOP lawmakers have approved more modest changes restricting access to cashless personal bonds, needing only majority support to send the legislation to Abbottâs desk.
As recently as 2021, a constitutional amendment tightening the stateâs bail laws â similar to this sessionâs measure â won the requisite 100 votes in the House, but died as a casualty of a Democratic walkout over a voting bill.
âThereâs some added pressure on the Democrats to get it done, just simply because this is a really big problem, and itâs a bipartisan issue,â said Nikki Pressley, Texas state director of Right on Crime at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. âPeople feel unsafe, and weâre seeing stories all the time, over and over, of people getting out on bond and then seriously hurting someone.â
When the bail provisions died in 2021, Abbott called a special session. This time, Patrick has said he would force a special session if the Legislature failed to agree on bail measures.
âIf these bills do not pass the House, I see no reason for us not to go to a special session and another special session and another special session,â Patrick said in February and again in March. âWe will not leave here until these bills pass the House, period. If it takes two years, weâll keep coming back.â
It is unclear whether Abbottâs proposal to require pretrial detention in some cases will make it into the final measure, though Huffman and Smithee both expressed support for it.
That proposal raised alarm among civil rights advocates, who called it an attack on liberty and the constitutional guarantee to due process. And it sparked accusations from Democrats that Abbott was moving the goalposts and looking to keep bail reform as a campaign issue ahead of the 2026 elections.
âObviously, he doesnât want us to solve the problem,â Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, said in an interview Tuesday, arguing that automatic denial of bail âcompletely supersedesâ the judicial discretion needed in the courts. âHe wants to make this a divisional issue between Republicans and Democrats, and so heâs demonizing my community around public safety.â
In pushing for the bail provisions, Abbott has called out several Harris County Democrats by name, highlighting violent crimes in their districts allegedly committed by people out on bond. Johnson, the former chief human trafficking prosecutor in Harris County, introduced her own legislation to expand the cases in which judges could deny bail, proposing a narrower set of offenses than the GOP legislation, with many of the same violent charges. Her proposal also sets deadlines for when judges must deny bail and would allow defendants to appeal such orders to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The amendment has not received a committee hearing.
An Abbott spokesperson reiterated that the governor was pushing to automatically deny bail in certain cases to rein in âactivist judgesâ setting âweak bail.â
âGovernor Abbott will work with the Legislature to require judges deny bail to criminals charged with capital murder and other heinous violent crimes,â Abbott press secretary Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement Tuesday. âDemocrats must choose â support the safety of the citizens they represent, or the criminals who kill them.â
The Senate this session has approved four bills to keep criminal defendants accused of certain violent crimes behind bars while they await the resolution of their cases.
Bail is a legal mechanism used around the country to incentivize defendants who have not been convicted to appear at court hearings. Defendants can pay the full bail amount, which is refundable if they go to all their hearings, or they can pay a nonrefundable partial deposit to a bail bond company that fronts the full amount. Defendants who cannot afford to pay a deposit or their bail are often left detained for weeks or months.
The upper chamberâs main bail measure, Senate Joint Resolution 5, would amend the Texas Constitution to allow judges to deny bail under an expanded list of criminal charges, including murder, aggravated kidnapping, robbery or assault with a weapon.
Republican leaders, along with crime victims and their supporters, said the legislation is necessary to keep dangerous people behind bars before their trials. They pointed to numerous examples of defendants accused of violent crimes being released on bond and then committing new crimes, including a number of high-profile murder cases in Harris County.
In negotiations on the package, Democrats have sought to narrow the list of charges where judges could deny bail to avoid sweeping in defendants who arenât a public safety threat or flight risk. They have also tried to include language that instructs judges to use the âleast restrictive meansâ to secure public safety and ensure a defendant appears in court.
Under his push to automatically deny bail, Abbott would require defendants to prove to a judge that they are not a threat to public safety and will appear in court to get bail.
âJudges have far too much discretion to set easy bail on dangerous criminals,â he said at a news conference last week surrounded by the families of crime victims. âThis shifts the burden for repeat violent criminals to prove that they are not a danger to the community before they’re released.â
Smithee, the House Criminal Jurisprudence chair, said that Abbottâs proposal was âappropriateâ in certain cases, arguing that some judges were shirking their duty by letting dangerous defendants out on low and no bond. The ongoing discussions, he added, centered on defining the offenses that would qualify for automatic denial of bail.
âItâs certainly reserved for the most egregious offenses,â including murder and human trafficking, he said. âThe bill really needs to do two things: One, it needs to give good judges the ability to do their job â in other words, to protect the public. And on the other hand, it needs to rein in some of the judges whoâve neglected to do that.â
Chuck Cook, whose elderly mother, Rosalie Cook, was stabbed and killed by a man who had nearly 70 prior arrests and was out of jail on two cashless bonds, urged lawmakers to âpicture my motherâs face and make a decision accordinglyâ as they considered bail legislation.
âMy mom died a lonely, painful death,â Cook said by Abbottâs side last week. âThe system is supposed to be designed to protect the public and, most importantly, the most vulnerable. The system failed my mother.â
Civil rights advocates slammed both Abbottâs proposal and the existing legislation, arguing that the measure would undermine defendantsâ constitutional right to due process and swell the stateâs already overcrowded jails without improving public safety.
âPretrial detention tears families apart, drains public resources and punishes people who havenât been convicted of anything,â Nick Hudson, senior manager of policy and advocacy at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said, noting studies finding that pretrial detention is associated with an increased likelihood of later committing a crime. âAll Texans should be worried about an attack on their right to be free before trial. Anybody can be accused of an offense.â
Hudson also criticized Abbottâs proposal for automatic denial of bail, which he said âjust totally inverts the basic idea of innocent until proven guilty.â
Kirsten Budwine, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, argued that the legislation would âmake Texans less safe by destabilizing the lives of legally innocent people.â She cited the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling stating that âliberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial or without trial is the carefully limited exception.â
âThis bail package blatantly disregards that by doing the opposite â making pretrial detention the norm and liberty the exception,â she said, noting the stories of people who spent months in pretrial detention for crimes they did not commit. âPeople spend days, months and even years in jail just for the prosecutor to drop the case. But at that point, the harm has already been done.â
Smithee said it is a balancing act to craft a constitutional amendment that can satisfy the push to crack down on bail practices without going so far as to alienate Democrats and Republicans alike. The forthcoming package, he said, âoperates within those confines.â
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.