Texas state officials are planning to transfer control of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) from democratically elected leaders to a commission appointed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Officials will transfer management of the district — the largest in the state and the eighth-largest in the nation — to the commission starting on June 1. HISD previously blocked TEA efforts to…
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On Wednesday, a federal judge in the case on the widely used abortion medication mifepristone indicated to courtroom observers that he was sympathetic to arguments for banning the drug, which is used in more than half of abortions nationwide. A coalition of anti-abortion groups called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is seeking to have mifepristone deemed illegal for use on the grounds that…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Not so long ago, book burnings were considered a festive group activity by assorted right-wing zealots. Today, though, burning seems so old-fashioned and, well… crude.
Yet, the concept is burning hotter than ever among a gaggle of testosterone-driven Republican leaders eager to show voters that they will go to extremes to incinerate progressive ideas and people’s personal liberties. Rather than lighting bonfires, though, the new fad for GOP politicians is simply to use government power to ban the offending books (thus saving the expense of matches and lighter fluid).
It might not surprise you to learn that our Lone Star State’s extremist political operatives are leading today’s book-banning frenzy. One Jonathan Mitchell, for example, is going from town to town pushing Texas Republican officeholders to pass local ordinances he labels “Safe Library Patron Protection.” Yes, patrons, censoring what you can read is necessary to “protect” you. The GOP ban prohibits libraries from having books, videos, etc. that contain “immoral content,” which he defines as depictions of nudity, sexual behavior, mentions of masturbation, LGBTQ+ life, etc. It’s also autocratically homophobic, making it illegal for librarians to display LGBTQ flags or even mention “LGBTQ Pride Month.”
This repressive monomania stabs even deeper into our freedom of expression by concocting a “right” of right-wing vigilantes to enforce the ordinances. Yes, self-appointed bands of bounty hunters would be authorized to roam the countryside suing local libraries (and individual librarians) for having “banned” books on the shelves. To spur this political malice, Mitchell’s scheme provides a $10,000 reward for every violation a vigilante finds (or fabricates).
Well, you say, thank God I don’t live in Texas! But — Hello! — repression doesn’t recognize state borders, so the pernicious idea of paid library marauders is spreading across the country.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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Republican lawmakers in Texas have introduced a bill that would allow individuals to sue drag performers and the venues that host them if a child is in attendance at a performance— an enforcement mechanism that LGBTQ and abortion advocates have compared to that of Texas’s 2021 abortion ban, which effectively encourages bounty hunting. House Bill 4378 is one of six anti-drag bills introduced by…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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A Texas man is suing three women under the wrongful death statute, alleging that they assisted his ex-wife in terminating her pregnancy, the first such case brought since the state’s near-total ban on abortion last summer. Marcus Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general and architect of the state’s prohibition on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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One month after a fiery train crash in East Palestine, Ohio sparked an ongoing environmental and public health crisis, an anti-plastic coalition on Friday highlighted how the petrochemical industry poisons communities across the United States and called for “systemic change.”
The Norfolk Southern-owned train that derailed and ignited near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border on February 3 was overloaded with hazardous materials, many of them derived from fossil fuels. To avert a catastrophic explosion, authorities released and burned vinyl chloride—a carcinogenic petrochemical used to make plastic—from five tanker cars, provoking residents’ fears about the long-term health impacts of toxic air pollution and groundwater contamination.
“This is a plastics and petrochemical disaster,” the global Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) coalition said Friday in a statement.
According to the coalition:
A preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that the train derailment was caused by a hot axle that heated one of the train cars carrying polypropylene plastic pellets, according to NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. These plastic pellets serve as the pre-production materials that corporations manufacture into shampoo bottles, plastic cups, and other single-use items. The highly combustible, fossil fuel-derived pellets ignited the initial fire aboard the Norfolk Southern train, which led to its derailment.
In addition to the pellets, yet another plastic building block is at the heart of this disaster: vinyl chloride. Vinyl chloride is a known human carcinogen used almost exclusively to produce polyvinyl chloride, also known as PVC plastic, which is often turned into pipes, flooring, shower curtains, and even plastic food wrap. Not only is vinyl chloride toxic and harmful itself, Norfolk Southern’s burning of the chemical likely resulted in dioxins, one of the most persistent and toxic chemicals, even at low levels of exposure.
In response to public pressure, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday ordered Norfolk Southern to test for dioxins, a class of highly toxic industrial byproducts that the agency had previously opted to ignore in the East Palestine disaster zone.
“While we’re glad to see this announcement, we wish it had come sooner,” said Graham Hamilton, U.S. policy officer at BFFP. “Justice delayed is justice denied, and we expect more from an administration that claims to prioritize environmental justice.”
Mike Schade, director of Toxic-Free Future’s Mind the Store campaign, said that “the EPA must not only test for dioxins in soil, but also in indoor dust, sediments, fish, and on farms impacted by the massive plume.”
“Importantly, the EPA should be conducting the testing itself and/or hiring independent scientists to test for dioxins, rather than requiring the community of East Palestine to rely on Norfolk Southern for that accountability,” said Schade.
“This disaster is yet another painful reminder of the dangers of making, transporting, using, and disposing of chemicals in plastics, especially polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic,” Schade added. “Governments, retailers, and brands must redouble their efforts to phase out PVC plastic and other highly hazardous plastics and chemicals and move towards safer solutions.”
The U.S. is home to more than 1,000 train derailments per year, and according to one estimate, the country is averaging one chemical disaster every two days.
Low-income communities in the Ohio River Valley and along the Gulf Coast are disproportionately harmed by the petrochemical industry.
“These communities subsidize the cost of cheap disposable plastic at the fenceline of oil rigs, petrochemical plants, incinerators, and the trains and trucks used for transporting the toxic and deadly chemicals,” said Yvette Arellano, the founder and director of Fenceline Watch, a Texas-based advocacy group and BFFP member.
“The price we pay is with our lives, from shortened lifespans [to] reproductive harm [and] developmental issues; these toxics trespass our bodies and harm our communities for generations,” added Arellano, whose organization helped pressure the EPA to halt the 1,300-mile shipment of contaminated wastewater from East Palestine to the Houston area, where it had been slated to be injected underground.
“The petrochemical industry is inherently unsafe. Even standard operations pollute and damage communities, and regulators continue to fail to do the bare minimum to hold polluters accountable.”
As BFFP pointed out, the ongoing East Palestine disaster “is not the only petrochemical crisis” hurting residents of the Ohio River Valley.
“Less than 15 miles from the derailment site,” a new Shell facility in Beaver County, Pennsylvania “has received numerous violations and exceeded its annual emissions limits since coming online in November of 2022,” the coalition pointed out.
As Andie from the Eyes on Shell watchdog group observed: “With the community already on edge, just one week following the release and burn in East Palestine, Shell activated an enormous emergency flare which, without warning, continued flaring for hours. The derailment and emergency flare are terrifying reminders of the risks the petrochemical industry poses to our community every single day.”
Earthworks campaigner Anaïs Peterson stressed that “the petrochemical industry is inherently unsafe.”
“Even standard operations pollute and damage communities,” said Peterson, “and regulators continue to fail to do the bare minimum to hold polluters accountable.”
Amanda Kiger of River Valley Organizing (RVO)—a Columbiana County-based group that has been working to support East Palestine residents since the derailment—said that “nobody should have their entire lives upended because Norfolk Southern and makers of these hazardous chemicals put their profits ahead of the safety of our communities and our country.”
“With people developing rashes and breathing problems, it’s clear people are still being exposed to dangerous chemicals,” said Kiger. “Norfolk Southern should give residents the resources to relocate and should pay for independent testing of the soil, water, and air, as well as medical exams and follow-up for years to come.”
Ultimately, BFFP argued, “we need systemic reforms to stop the petrochemical industry from having carte blanche to profit off of poisoning people and the planet.”
Despite BFFP’s demands for a robust, legally binding global plastics treaty that prohibits corporations from manufacturing an endless stream of toxic single-use items, Inside Climate News reported this week that the initial proposal from the Biden administration’s delegation to the United Nations was described as “low ambition” and “underwhelming” because it “sidesteps calls for cuts in production, praises the benefits of plastics, and focuses on national priorities versus global mandates.”
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A Republican state legislator in Texas is proposing a bill that would incentivize home-buying, but only for heterosexual parents in the state who have never been divorced and who have four or more children. The bill, authored by Rep. Bryan Slaton (R), would offer a 10 percent discount to parents on their local property taxes for every child they have. Caveats to his proposal, however…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Amarillo, Texas — Federal judges in Texas have delivered time and again for abortion opponents. They upheld a state law that allows for $10,000 bounties to be placed on anyone who helps a woman get an abortion; ruled that someone opposed to abortion based on religious beliefs can block a federal program from providing birth control to teens; and determined that emergency room doctors must equally…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Residents and officials in Harris County, Texas have expressed alarm since learning that contaminated water used to extinguish a fiery train crash in East Palestine, Ohio has been transported more than 1,300 miles to a Houston suburb for disposal. Houston’s Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience tweeted Thursday: “We are disturbed to learn that toxic wastewater from East Palestine…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter. Like many other typical teenagers, James’ favorite periods in school are P.E. and lunch. During our phone call, he turned the tables on me, politely asking about my children and work. A 15-year-old student who was born with…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Anti-abortion groups are wrongly conflating abortion medication with illegal “drug trafficking” as Republicans push to shut down remote clinics nationwide, raising fears that activists, providers and pregnant people could soon be prosecuted for medications that are considered to be as safe as Tylenol and that account for more than half of all reported abortions in the United States.
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Gliding through the shallow channel on the north side of Corpus Christi Bay, you will see stubborn remnants of a barrier island estuary that was once home to vast oyster beds, seagrass meadows, teeming fish nurseries and abundant alligators. You will see dolphins, terns, maybe even a roseate spoonbill. “You still see glimpses of the natural beauty,” said Jennifer Hilliard, 56, over the growl of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Appeals court submission exposes racial toxicity in case of Black man John Balentine, sentenced to death for 1999 triple murder
In April 1999, John Balentine, a Black man on trial for murder in Amarillo, Texas, sat before an all-white jury as they deliberated whether he should live or die.
Should he be given a life sentence, in which case he would likely end his days behind prison bars? Or should they send him to death row to await execution?
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
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Under new legislation proposed in Texas, the state’s Republican attorney general could send prosecutors from neighboring counties to investigate suspected cases of voter fraud in the state’s large Democratic counties.
The bill is one of at least nine filed in Texas since the November midterm elections that would increase criminal penalties for voting-related infractions or extend law enforcement’s ability to investigate voters, signaling an intensification of what is already one of the most threatening waves of voter suppression in decades.
Another proposal would allow the attorney general to remove from office a district attorney who chooses not to prosecute election crimes, effectively stripping local prosecutors of discretion over how they use their office’s resources.
The two bills targeting district attorneys, introduced by Reps. Keith Bell and Bryan Slaton, respectively, would set the stage for Republican interference in the state’s Democratic urban centers, as top GOP officials continue to push the myth that widespread voter fraud is undermining elections.
The bills were proposed about a week after Harris County, home of Houston and one of the state’s main Democratic strongholds, experienced ballot shortages and late polling site openings. Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat, has launched an investigation, but the state’s top Republicans – including Gov. Greg Abbott – immediately seized on the confusion and used the problems as pretext to contest a number of elections, even ones Democrats won by wide margins.
“The allegations of election improprieties in our state’s largest county may result from anything ranging from malfeasance to blatant criminal conduct,” Abbott said.
Bell and Slaton are both Republicans who represent districts adjacent to Dallas County, another center of Democratic power.
Slaton’s bill, which would allow the attorney general to remove elected prosecutors whose policies he disagrees with, would give legislative cover to executive branch efforts to interfere with prosecutorial discretion on a local level – something that has happened elsewhere in the country. In August, for example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, suspended an elected state prosecutor who said he would decline to prosecute those seeking and providing abortions in the state. The Texas bill outlines a process for the attorney general to initiate civil court proceedings against a local prosecutor, whose fate would ultimately be decided by a jury.
Neither Slaton, Bell nor Attorney General Ken Paxton’s offices responded to requests for comment.
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting’s review of legislative records found at least seven more bills in Texas that would increase law enforcement involvement in the election process. Several bills would increase the penalty for illegal voting. Another would make it a crime for a voter to cast a ballot in a party’s primary election if the voter is not a member of that party.
Republicans were the authors of each of these bills.
The bills are part of a wave of legislation that has followed former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen by fraud. An ongoing Reveal investigation found that lawmakers across the country have introduced and passed bills that would dramatically increase law enforcement involvement in elections. In the two years since the 2020 election, legislators in 42 states introduced bills that would establish new election investigation agencies, create new election-related crimes or give law enforcement officials more power to investigate these crimes. Such laws passed in 20 states.
Dozens of lawsuits and audits have disproven the claim that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud, while multiple studies have shown widespread voter fraud does not exist.
In 2021, for example, Texas lawmakers passed Senate Bill 1, which created new election crimes, including making it a felony for any election official to provide a mail-in ballot to someone who didn’t request it. Paxton also created an election integrity team, which has been unsuccessfully targeting election workers, according to ProPublica.
The proposed bills in Texas target phantom problems.
“District attorneys are appropriately investigating fraud, as far as we know,” said Matt Simpson, interim policy director at the ACLU of Texas. “There’s not cases where election fraud is happening and district attorneys just refuse to move forward. There’s just not evidence of these things being problems.”
Moves by the Legislature and statewide officials to undermine local elected officials’ power can also chill the vote.
“When you de-legitimize local or elected officials, you also undermine confidence in democracy,” said civil rights attorney Tom Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “People lose faith that their votes matter.”
Saenz said the true intent of these efforts is to suppress the vote, particularly in marginalized communities.
Threatening people with criminal prosecution is “the most extreme deterrent you can imagine,” he said. “Even if someone has every right to vote, they may hesitate. Or if someone has every right to facilitate participation by their own family members, by their own neighbors, that causes a hesitation.”
“That’s the whole purpose of it,” Saenz said. It’s no coincidence that, in Texas, these efforts come alongside demographic changes that could weaken Republicans’ grip on power, he added.
Another Texas bill would require the secretary of state to designate select state law enforcement as “election marshals” with the power to investigate voting crimes. It was first introduced in 2021 and passed out of the state Senate but floundered in the House.
When the bill’s sponsor, Houston-area Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt, reintroduced it in November, he said he wants to introduce more “voter integrity legislation” in the coming session. He’s also described the 2022 midterm election in Harris County as a “3rd world” contest.
Meanwhile, Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate’s president, has signaled that adopting stricter penalties for election crimes will be a legislative priority in this year’s session.
“We need to restore voter fraud to a felony,” Patrick said at a press conference in late November. “Unfortunately, it was dropped to a misdemeanor last time. It’s a serious crime – you steal someone’s vote.”
SB 1 downgraded illegal voting from a felony to a misdemeanor. Under that law, illegal voting is punishable with a maximum $4,000 fine, a one-year jail term or both.
Ahead of the new legislative session, lawmakers in both legislative chambers filed four separate bills that would make illegal voting punishable by a felony charge.
One of those bills came from Slaton, a former pastor and co-author of SB 1. His bill would make illegal voting a second-degree felony, punishable by prison sentences of two to 20 years, plus a possible $10,000 fine.
Another bill would increase the criminal penalty for election fraud, or tampering with someone else’s vote.
State lawmakers are seeking to make changes to elections in other ways, too. For example, one bill would allow select poll workers, known as election judges, to carry guns at polling places during early voting and at polling places on Election Day.
The ACLU’s Simpson said Texas has a host of pressing issues that its Legislature could be addressing now in its once-every-two-years session.
“Texas, famously, has an electric grid that is different from the rest of the country, that is not that reliable,” he said. “There’s some real issues in Texas, and I think that when we get into these conversations and these policy discussions about district attorney authority and how we’re gonna, in great detail, push different agendas with different local officials – these conversations waste time that should be spent on real issues.”
This story was edited by Maryam Saleh and Andrew Donohue and copy edited by Nikki Frick.
Ese Olumhense can be reached at eolumhense@revealnews.org. Follow her on Twitter: @essayolumhense.
Texas Republicans Look to Usurp Power of Local Prosecutors Who Don’t Pursue Their Voter Fraud Agenda is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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Originally published by The 19th. Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Texas Planned Parenthood affiliates have asked a judge for a ruling in their favor in a lawsuit brought by the state of Texas that accused Planned Parenthood of Medicaid fraud. The suit was filed in January 2022 by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, but the situation goes back to 2016, when the state of Texas barred…
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Originally published by The 19th. Lawmakers in at least eight states used the last two months of 2022 to prefile anti-transgender bills ahead of state legislative sessions convening this month — setting up another year of statehouse battles over trans rights, while targeting health care for trans adults in new ways. Most states moving early on anti-trans bills focused on banning gender-affirming…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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From an observation deck near the top of his South Texas rocket launch tower, Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and self-proclaimed proponent of free speech, looks northward to South Padre Island, home to many ancient village sites of the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. In a video published last May to the YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut, Musk is seen looking over the tower’s railing and down at a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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The civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education has opened a federal investigation into a Texas school district, alleging that officials violated the rights of LGBTQ students when they ordered librarians to remove books with LGBTQ themes from schools. The investigation, which was opened on December 6, notes that the superintendent of the Granbury Independent School District…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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This past summer, Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested employees at the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to do a sweeping search of its database to provide him with names of individuals who, over the past two years, changed their gender on their driver’s licenses and other records. To some, the search appears to be a clear request to find out who in the state is a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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When President Joe Biden took office and Democrats took control of Congress, several Texas lawmakers had hoped this would be their shot to codify protections for migrants who came to the country as children under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. But with only three weeks left in the legislative session in which Democrats have control of both chambers, they still don’t have a deal. Over 100…
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The Republican Party’s midterm election expectations for South Texas were dashed. But Democrats should still see the results from the region as a wake-up call.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
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A Republican state lawmaker is seeking to dissolve the city of Austin, Texas — a jurisdiction that frequently elects progressive-leaning lawmakers — through legislation that would turn the municipality into a district overseen by the state government.
State Rep. Jared Patterson (R) introduced House Bill 714 last week (along with a constitutional amendment) that would replace the capital city’s government with the District of Austin. Under Patterson’s bill, the jurisdiction would still have elections for local leaders, but their decision-making would be subject to oversight by the state legislature and the state lieutenant governor.
The bill is viewed as being too extreme to get passed, but the submission of Patterson’s proposal is nothing new — Republican lawmakers have for years concocted similar ideas for ways to disrupt Austin’s progressive style of city management. In recent years, the state legislature has clashed with the city on a number of ideas, often passing new legislative bills in order to punish Austin’s government — for example, passing a bill that lessened funding for cities in the state that cut police budgets, as Austin had done in 2020.
Though it is unlikely to pass, the bill could see higher interest from state legislative lawmakers, as Republicans made modest gains in the statehouse, which they already had majority control over, during this year’s midterms. The GOP gained one seat in the state House of Representatives, increasing their majority to 86 seats (versus 64 held by Democratic lawmakers); and in the Senate, Republicans gained at least one seat, with another seat still yet to be decided. Incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, won reelection to his post as well in his contest against Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke.
In a set of tweets announcing his legislation, Patterson described Austin as a “failed” city with high taxes and crime — a common (and exaggerated) midterm talking point of Republicans.
Patterson’s bill won’t be considered until the state legislature reconvenes in January. City lawmakers throughout the state have condemned the proposal as an attempt to undemocratically control people’s lives, even in areas where progressive lawmakers are duly elected by the people.
“This brazen attack on [local control] is not only an attempt to take away the will of the voters in Austin, but is a prime example of the waste of time and resources that occurs every session,” Dallas City Councilman Adam Bazaldua said.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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In February 2020, just around one month before the World Health Organization (WHO) declared SARS-CoV-2 a “global pandemic” and as nations scrambled to respond to the novel coronavirus, that same organization declared an infodemic. At the time, the WHO described the infodemic as an “over-abundance of information — some accurate and some not — that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.”
Two and a half years later, Peter Hotez –– the Nobel Prize-winning physician-scientist, global health expert, and co-inventor of the patent-free COVID vaccine, Corbevax –– is done with the “infodemic.” Experts overuse that term, he told Truthout this week. But “infodemic” is an obscuring phrase. Even the WHO’s old description reads as naive, it seems to suggest that misinformation and disinformation are random, isolated issues –– a benign overload that leaves the public confused and in the dark.
Hotez is countering this depiction. The movement, he says, is “organized and deliberate.” The problem can’t be solved with small-scale solutions like relying on social media companies to deplatform “repeat offenders” or changing algorithms. That type of reform, warns Hotez, “doesn’t get at the monster. The monster is letting people die unnecessarily from vaccine-preventable disease.” And the monster, Hotez asserts, “has actors, political power, money and nefarious designs.”
Nick Sawyer, an emergency medicine physician and founder of the grassroots organization No License for Disinformation, calls the movement “well-coordinated and well-funded.” Earlier this month, for instance, reports surfaced that a Koch-funded right-wing litigation group had become involved in two separate misinformation-related lawsuits.
When the midterm elections were looming, the monster went into overdrive. Reports from STAT in late October show that “Republicans’ ad buys are now outpacing Democrats’” on COVID-related campaign ads. “GOP candidates have pumped nearly $46 million into COVID-related campaign ads compared to $159 million in the 2020 cycle; Democrats have channeled $17 million toward the topic, a sliver of the $476 million spent during 2020.” And “among deeply conservative and often Trump-backed congressional and gubernatorial candidates, calls to investigate or even jail Anthony Fauci have become regular campaign rallying cries.”
Hotez says that these efforts are all part of the rise of “anti-science aggression” — by now, a “core component” of U.S. politics. In the last decade, Hotez has had a “front row seat” to its rise. (These days, Hotez is known for being public enemy number one in anti-science circles; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called him an “OG Villain.”) But as a physician-scientist, Hotez says that he struggles to talk about these issues. Doctors are supposed to be “politically neutral. But what do you do when this is so clearly about a partisan divide?”
In October, a National Bureau of Economic Research study concluded that “significantly more Republicans than Democrats have died from the virus” since the initial vaccine rollout in 2021. Jacob Wallace, an assistant professor of public health at the Yale School of Public Health and one of the study’s co-authors, told Truthout that his group was, to his knowledge, the first to demonstrate the “link between political party affiliation and excess death rates during the COVID-19 pandemic at the individual level. … Our results suggest that political party affiliation only became a risk factor in Ohio and Florida after vaccines were widely available.”
Hotez agreed that deaths are now “overwhelmingly” occurring in red states. “The redder the state,” he said, “the more COVID cases and the more COVID deaths. Where is the horror and the outrage?” Hotez says that even in some of the hardest-hit conservative communities in Texas, folks “don’t connect the dots –– that they were victims of this truly disgusting anti-science aggression.”
Why not?
“Presumably because they’re still in the rabbit hole.”
In a new article –– one that he says was one of the saddest and most difficult he has written in his career –– Hotez draws attention to the effects of “red COVID” in his home state, Texas. The term “reflects the strong anti-vaccine activism promoted by elected officials on the far right and spread on conservative news and social media sites.” This rhetoric originates out of “health freedom” language; in the 2000s and 2010s, so-called health freedom groups were highly organized, both online and offline, partnering with Tea Party organizations to fight state-level school vaccine requirements. Both the “framework and propaganda tool … accelerated in Texas in the 2010s” in connection with childhood vaccination mandates in schools. But in 2020, with the arrival of the pandemic, purported health freedom groups “expanded their vaccine protests to social distancing, masks and other prevention measures.”
In places like Texas, the consequences have been well-documented, and devastating. Texas is “just behind California as the state with the most COVID deaths,” Hotez writes, “but with a Texas population estimated at 29 million compared to 40 million people living in California, the proportion of Texas deaths is far higher.” Although deaths more or less halted in highly vaccinated communities after May 1, 2021 –– when President Biden announced that “any American who wished to take [a COVID ] vaccine could do so” — in places like Texas and other parts of the southern U.S. and mountain West states, “the deaths had just begun.”
Hotez estimates that approximately 40,000 of the 90,000 total COVID deaths in Texas occurred after May 1, 2021. In the first three months of 2022, during the peak of the Omicron wave, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that death rates were “20 times higher among unvaccinated people compared to people who were vaccinated and had received a booster.” Hotez thus concludes that the vast majority of those 40,000 deaths were in unvaccinated Texans.
Some scholars, however, have complicated the narrative about the shift in COVID mortality by party affiliation and race. A Washington Post analysis recently found that the COVID mortality gap “flipped” at the end of 2021; white people are now dying at a higher rate than Black people. But social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger says that this flip “has vastly different implications for public health interventions.” Officials, she says, need to strike a balance between connecting with “communities who are ideologically opposed to the vaccine,” while at the same time contending with “the cumulative impact of injustice” on communities of color.
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a demographer and sociologist, concurs. This remains a “pandemic of the disadvantaged,” she says, not just a pandemic of the unvaccinated, as President Biden memorably called it. Indeed, in Wrigley-Field’s research in Minnesota, COVID vaccination rates don’t fully account for mortality rates by race; “white people are less vaccinated,” Wrigley-Field and her co-authors note, “but also less likely to die of COVID.” The authors conclude that these numbers imply an “urgent need to center health equity” in future COVID policy.
Wallace and Hotez, meanwhile, are both concerned that the situation may get worse in places like Texas. “If the well-documented differences in vaccine rates by party affiliation persist,” Wallace said, “we are worried that we may continue to see higher excess death rates among Republican voters through the subsequent stages of the pandemic.”
Hotez worries that “the health sector doesn’t know what to do. Our health sector leaders are fumbling.” But this is a “political problem,” he says –– “with political origins.” And the movement has their “sights set on all vaccines.”
The ramifications are far-reaching; researchers at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy assert that the future of national vaccine policy runs through Texas. In 2021, Texas lawmakers filed a “trove of anti-COVID-19-vaccination bills.” More anti-vaccination bills were filed in that one year than had been filed in the prior 19 years put together. But the bills that did not pass in the last session will likely be refiled this year: “the 2023 Texas legislative session is expected to be another difficult session” for vaccine policies and their advocates.
Hotez agrees. He says that in the coming months and years, “there is going to be a battle in the Texas state legislature.”
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Governors Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis’s callous and politically motivated transport of immigrants to various “liberal bastions” in the U.S. received a great deal of national attention after thousands of immigrants were bused to New York City, Washington, D.C. and Martha’s Vineyards under false pretenses. However, less notice has been given to Operation Lone Star, Abbott’s coordinated $4 billion effort to deter and prosecute migrants in south Texas. Since the program began in 2021, thousands of migrants have been prosecuted for enhanced crimes under a bogus disaster declaration.
In 2010, when Arizona passed SB 1070 — the “Show Me Your Papers” law which used the state criminal legal system to greatly expand the grounds for arresting and prosecuting immigrants — the Obama administration sued within three months. Through Operation Lone Star, Abbott is once again attempting to seize authority over immigration via the state criminal system. Yet to date, the Biden administration has failed to intervene.
Operation Lone Star is not only exacerbating the harms of the U.S. deportation machine, but also criminalizing and exploiting migrant lives in the process. The program sets a dangerous precedent for how authoritarian leaders can co-opt, expand and unleash existing criminal legal infrastructure onto political targets, which — if it isn’t stopped — could be replicated in other states.
In early October, I joined a delegation led by the Texas-based organization Grassroots Leadership to witness Operation Lone Star. As we made our way through Uvalde, Kinney County, Dilley, Eagle Pass and across the U.S.-Mexico border to Piedras Negras, we saw the impact of Operation Lone Star everywhere. Law enforcement was omnipresent, convened on the area from localities hours away: a Galveston County constable vehicle in the parking lot at the Kinney County Courthouse, San Angelo fire trucks at the Val Verde County Detention Center and so on. We witnessed the Texas National Guard detaining a migrant under the international bridge in Eagle Pass while they awaited the arrival of border agents. We observed a virtual hearing for two people, one a migrant from Honduras, the other a U.S. citizen and new father whose bond was set at $400,000 for “smuggling” two undocumented immigrants. Under the guise of “border security,” small communities across south Texas are becoming police states right before our eyes.
What makes Operation Lone Star both terrifying and replicable is how Abbott seized and shaped the law, legal institutions and the machinery of the prison-industrial complex to expand funding for the carceral state while unleashing its might on migrants. Every step of Operation Lone Star and its use of the criminal system is both familiar and amplified, from using cash bail to keep loved ones in jail or extract money from their families, to jailing people prior to trial to coerce them into pleading guilty. The expansiveness and availability of local and state criminal systems across the United States means any state could use their systems in a similar way.
Abbott took several concrete steps to make this vision a reality. First, he needed the legal basis to arrest and jail migrants, which he shaped through executive action. When Abbott declared a disaster last year, purportedly on the basis of an influx of undocumented immigration in 34 counties (now 54), the Texas Disaster Act kicked in that allowed certain criminal offenses to be enhanced one level up in the disaster area. Thus, a criminal trespass offense, which typically is a Class B misdemeanor carrying a potential punishment of up to 180 days in prison, is now eligible to be charged as a Class A misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to a year in prison. The potential for severe punishment, combined with imprisonment under squalid conditions, is used as a coercive tool to get people to plead guilty just to get out of prison, sending them into a deportation pipeline.
For Operation Lone Star to work, Abbott also needed additional judicial resources to create a semblance of due process. Thus, in spring 2021, the Texas Supreme Court pulled 30 judges out of retirement or senior status and appointed them as magistrates in counties central to Abbott’s operation. This permitted those judges to conduct “magistrations” via video conference from the comfort of their homes, during which they notify people of the charges against them, set frequently exorbitant bail amounts and begin the process of appointing an attorney. In the past year, thousands of people have been funneled through these virtual courts, often the only time they see a judge in the months following their arrest.
To jail migrants while they “awaited trial” (out of the thousands of people arrested in the 16 months since the program began, I could only find documentation of one trial), Abbott used existing prison infrastructure overseen by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The department cleared two prisons by transferring most of the people held there to other units so that the prisons could be used to jail hundreds of migrants pretrial. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards, which in theory oversees Texas jails, rubber-stamped this unprecedented use of the state prison system to jail people before trial. When these prisons first started holding people arrested under Operation Lone Star, even their attorneys were unable to access them.
Equally concerning is the way in which Operation Lone Star is creating its own carceral economy, one that many poor, small south Texas towns are becoming dependent on. Grassroots organizers have observed that in Del Rio, local motels have started to upgrade their rooms to accommodate law enforcement officers from across the state. As we crossed the border to Piedras Negras the woman taking our fee to cross the bridge, an Eagle Pass resident, saw our shirts that read “End Operation Lone Star,” and responded, “We’re a poor town. I hope they don’t end Operation Lone Star.”
The Operation Lone Star money is coming from many directions. In addition to the commercial activity spawned by the operation in small Texas communities, Abbott has amassed $130 million to dole out as grants to participating cities and counties. Some counties are even creating their own boondoggles by extracting cash from incarcerated people and their loved ones through the cash bail system. Kinney County alone has collected about $3 million in bond money from migrants prosecuted by the county.
On the delegation through south Texas, as we stood outside jails and courthouses learning more about the harms of Operation Lone Star, we were often surrounded by monarch butterflies on their journey south during their annual migration — an ever-present reminder that the lines we call borders are made up.
Abbott masterminded Operation Lone Star, but the Biden administration is also to blame, from Border Patrol and ICE agents collaborating with Texas officials, to the president continuing Trump-era policies that have made seeking safety at our southern border even more difficult for migrants seeking asylum. Biden must intervene now to protect migrants from Abbott’s draconian agenda — before Operation Lone Star spreads to other states.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Newly released polling from Texas shows that the state’s race for governor may be closer than what other surveys from the past few weeks have suggested, with Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke just a few points behind incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
According to a Beacon Research poll published this week, 48 percent of registered voters in Texas say they plan to vote for Abbott, while 45 percent say they are going to back O’Rourke, a former U.S. congressman who came within 2.6 points of defeating Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a senatorial race four years ago.
Among those who say they’re likely to vote — a slightly smaller number of voters than the number who are registered — Abbott leads by 48 percent, while O’Rourke has the support of 46 percent of respondents. And among those who say they’re “extremely motivated to vote,” the point differential between the two candidates is just 1 point.
The close margins between the two candidates in all three scenarios suggest that the race is a statistical tie, and that turnout will be key in determining who will win.
Among independents in the poll, O’Rourke fared better than his Republican counterpart, winning the support of voters who are unaligned with either political party by a margin of 47 percent to 41 percent.
It’s unknown whether the poll should be viewed as an outlier or as representative of where things are heading in the final weeks of the campaign. Since the start of October, Abbott has had an average lead in the polls of around 8 to 9 points over O’Rourke.
The new poll — if it is indeed a sign of things to come — suggests that a small yet significant number of voters in Texas have shifted their opinions. There is reason to believe the veracity of the new data, as Beacon Research receives a high rating from statistics website FiveThirtyEight.
“This is the closest the race has been since O’Rourke announced his candidacy,” said podcast host and frequent political commentator Dash Dobrofsky.
Democrats have aimed to win Texas in recent years, an outcome some have previously deemed unfathomable. O’Rourke’s loss in 2018 showed that Democrats could come within striking distance of winning statewide contests, and in 2020, President Joe Biden came within 5.6 points of winning the state, the smallest loss margin among Democratic candidates in Texas since 1996.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court decided – along partisan lines – against hearing an appeal from a Black man on death row in Texas who was found guilty by an all-white jury with at least three members who espoused racist views.
In 2005, Andre Thomas was convicted of killing his white wife, his son and his stepdaughter. Thomas, who has a long history of mental illness, alleges his lawyers at the time allowed the inclusion of jurors who expressed misgivings about the idea of interracial marriages.
Thomas pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. When he confessed to the murders, he said he had killed his family to “free them from evil.” While awaiting trial, he gouged out one of his own eyeballs. Years later, he gouged out his other eyeball and ate it.
Despite the clear signs and a long history of mental illness — Thomas began hearing voices well before he was a teenager, and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and active psychosis — Thomas’s lawyers at the time did a poor job of presenting evidence to back up his insanity plea, his current lawyers allege. They also failed to oppose the appointment of the racist jurors.
One juror seated at his trial stated in a questionnaire that they “vigorously” opposed interracial marriage, adding that they didn’t believe “God intended” such unions to occur. Another juror stated, “We should stay within our bloodline,” when asked about interracial marriages.
Prosecutors in Texas also apparently used the jurors’ bigoted viewpoints to their advantage. “Are you going to take the risk about [Thomas] asking your daughter out or your granddaughter out?” one of the prosecutors asked the panel of white jurors during the trial.
Thomas’s lawyers, hoping to impede the death sentence given to him, appealed his case to the Supreme Court. All six conservative justices decided against hearing his appeal, in spite of the evidence demonstrating racial bias and the ineptitude of his original lawyers. They gave no reasoning as to why they voted against allowing the appeal to move forward.
All three liberal justices stated that they would have granted Thomas’s appeal, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing why the High Court should have done so.
“This case involves a heinous crime apparently committed by someone who suffered severe psychological trauma. Whether Thomas’ psychological disturbances explain or in any way excuse his commission of murder, however, is beside the point,” Sotomayor said. “No jury deciding whether to recommend a death sentence should be tainted by potential racial biases that could infect its deliberations or decision, particularly where the case involved an interracial crime.”
Sotomayor also blasted Thomas’s former lawyers, adding:
By failing to challenge, or even question, jurors who were hostile to interracial marriage in a capital case involving that explosive topic, Thomas’s counsel performed well below an objective standard of reasonableness. This deficient performance prejudiced Thomas by depriving him of a fair trial.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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10 Mins Read
This November, the City of Austin’s Office of Sustainability is launching a month-long plant-based restaurant campaign and it’s all thanks to Britty Mann. Green Queen‘s Sonalie Figueiras talks to the Austin, Texas-based food educator and community activist about her mission to empower local chefs and restaurants to decarbonize their menus.
Britty Mann was tired of the lack of vegan options in her home city so she created a platform for change. Just a few short years later, Planted Society has helped add hundreds of plant-based dishes items on restaurant menus, inspired restaurants to become fully vegan, and is about to debut a sponsored partnership with the City of Austin during the month of November dubbed ‘Plant Based for the Planet Challenge’, which will see local restaurants promote a variety of activations from free coffees with plant-based meals to eliminating plant-based milk surcharges and chefs creating special daily meat-free dishes.
Below, I talk to Britty about how her mission has evolved, what has surprised her most about her journey, whether restaurant menus are inclusive enough, and whether the future is vegan.
Brunch Bar x Planted Society What was the mission of Planted Society when you started versus what the mission is now?
Britty Mann: I was running my local nonprofit ATX Vegans back in 2016 when I started a project pressuring non-vegan restaurants to serve more vegan food in my home of Austin, Texas. We were genuinely just interested in branching out from our regular spaces since the crowds at our events were getting bigger and it felt risky to invite folks out knowing we might fill the space before everyone could arrive. As much as I like to support fully vegan restaurants, omnivore restaurants around town had bigger seating areas and outdoor spaces, though many lacked good vegan options. I figured a “Vegan Night” was the least they could do if we were guaranteeing that 60-70 people would come out to dine, and we continued calling them “Vegan Nights” before I branched it out to become Planted Society.
Back then, our only mission was to make Austin restaurants a little more vegan-friendly, but I quickly recognized that I could utilize our existing work to help local businesses navigate customer demand for more plant-based options. It can be scary for restaurants to implement even the simplest menu change since common mistakes can lead to high costs and low returns for businesses already working with razor-thin margins.
Since inception, we’ve been able to help add just under 300 plant-based menu items at restaurants in Austin, Houston, Boston, and Chicago, including permanently converting 5 restaurants to 100% plant-based. Since we have outgrown our original home base, we decided this year to officially register Planted Society as a nonprofit and are preparing for a big year ahead, including seeking funding and grants to support our current work and grow our programming. Our projects currently include a partnership with the AVA Summit and the Plant Based for the Planet initiative, which is our largest to date. We have plans for initiatives with local school districts, hospitals, grocery chains, and more that we cannot wait to announce in the coming weeks and months.What has surprised you most about your journey with Planted?
Britty Mann: What never fails to surprise me is the willingness and enthusiasm I receive from chefs, managers, and owners about the possibility of going completely vegan for a night or adding menu options. I begin every new relationship assuming I’m going to spend a lot of my time convincing, arguing, and pleading for folks to work with our programming – but with nearly every partnership, I’m met with the same sentiment: Managers and owners saying ‘I have been thinking that this might be a good idea and I just haven’t had the time to really sit down and think about how to do it. Or chefs saying ‘I love coming up with new things and this gives me a fun challenge.’
Like many veteran vegans, I can’t help but pinch myself when I see businesses that want to cater to our needs or have perhaps already been trying to do so. Sometimes it just helps to have someone like Planted Society come in and make sure it gets done the right way.
Black Star Co-Op x Planted Society Do you believe there is a future where everyone is vegan?
Britty Mann: There was a time when I was certain a vegan future was possible as long as we never stopped fighting for it, even if I wasn’t lucky enough to be around by then. Though I’m still hopeful for that future, the goalpost for me is a lot simpler: I just want to make sure that veganism is as easy as possible for everyone who wants it. And the more work I do in this space, the more I see how necessary it is for activists, entrepreneurs, and policy-makers to remove barriers to veganism in any way that they can. My mission now is really just to make it as appealing as possible for everyone to make choices that benefit the planet and everyone on it. I think I’d be happy enough with that future.
Britty Mann, founder of Planted Society Why is it so hard for restaurants to add vegan menu items? What type of feedback/pushback do you get most often?
Britty Mann: The truth is that it’s usually not very hard for restaurants to add vegan menu items, it’s really just scary for businesses to take risks.
Entrepreneurs and chefs express the same fears that we hear from friends and family: it’s too expensive, I don’t have time, it’s not going to stick, I’ll lose the respect of people I like and if it’s not ‘broke, why fix it? For businesses, this translates to fears about heightened food and labor costs paired with the prospect of losing existing customers and not gaining enough new customers to make up for those expected walk-outs.
Chefs and owners are even more risk-averse after surviving a pandemic where restaurants were hit particularly hard, and considering that the industry as a whole is experiencing very real staffing difficulties post-quarantine, it’s no surprise that many are seeking a distraction-free path back to safety.
Luckily, as soon as we come in, most of those arguments are out the window. It’s our job to show them that working with Planted Society is not a charitable favor (though we are a charity!) or a distraction, but can actually be part of a supply-chain-centered business strategy that can help lower their food costs, empower their kitchen staff, attract new customers and gain the respect of the community.
What has been the reaction of consumers at the participating F&B outlets? Has this driven sales? Or have the menu items attracted flexitarians who would have otherwise eaten animal foods?
Britty Mann: Though we like to say our target audience is anyone who likes plant-based food, the overwhelming majority of RSVP’s may come from members of the vegan community, though self-described omnivores and flexitarians are eating these dishes just as much if not more often than vegans. As we tell our restaurant partners, vegans are often the ones who get to choose where the group eats.
Pre-pandemic, our activations ended in massive sales gains for our restaurant partners: anywhere from 35% sales increases to triple what they would normally see in a given period. Post-pandemic, we’re still trying to find an average expectation to share with partners that doesn’t artificially inflate the value of our program in these times. We can definitely still boast that partners should expect at least a 10-15% increase in sales during our activations, and we see that the longer we stay out of quarantine, the more that number is rising.Food is political in many ways. Do you see veganism as a political movement?
Britty Mann: Though food is inherently political, I don’t see veganism itself as a political movement. I think advocates can allow themselves to think bigger by acknowledging that veganism is simply one of many disinvestment strategies that can work within several existing political movements. Animal rights, civil rights, environmental justice, healthcare…the list goes on… are all inextricably linked to consumption, and I think veganism is a great example of an individual boycott that can help support positive outcomes that aid the goals of larger movements.
Do you see an overlap between the DEI movement/larger social justice movements and getting more vegan dishes on restaurant menus?
Britty Mann: I am a firm believer that there is not one single strategy that will, in itself, solve the social and environmental crises that are caused by animal consumption, but I do believe we can help move money away from harmful industries by making vegan food available and affordable on as many menus as possible.
Since Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities are disproportionately and inequitably affected by animal agriculture, I believe that the fight for animal rights and environmental justice is inextricably connected to any anti-racist movement. We have a long way to go in making that connection a more purposeful, inclusive, and equitable one.
Planted Society is, first and foremost, an organization that utilizes the inherent power of local public demand, so I think that our programs can be a meaningful resource to individuals and existing BIPGM-led grassroots organizations in the fight for food sovereignty, including efforts to eradicate food apartheids and food swamps. As we grow, my hope is that we are able to reach as many communities as possible, and that we can do our small part to make the overlap between animal advocacy and other social justice movements a more inclusive and intentional one.
Planted Society x City of Austin’s November 2022 ‘Plant Based for The Planet’ campaign Tell us more about your partnership with the City of Austin. How did that happen? What are your goals with this? Do you see this as a potential framework/template for other cities?
Britty Mann: This November, we are partnering with over 30 businesses in Austin to incentivize individuals to choose plant-based options when dining out. Each small-business partner is making a meaningful contribution to the challenge: Some are adding vegan dishes to their menu for the month, some are offering sizable discounts when customers choose a plant-based entree, and some are even giving away free food and beverages. At the end of the challenge, we’ll survey the community to determine the best dishes and give away some great prizes to individuals as well.
Our campaign is focused not only on sending the existing plant-based community into new spaces, but reaching everyone who dines out in Austin with the message that we don’t have to sacrifice quality and taste to make small choices that positively impact the planet. Because so many Austinites are already making efforts in their own lives to lessen their carbon footprint, we estimate that a large number of restaurant patrons will be enthusiastic about participating.
Because this is a city-wide, environmentally-focused campaign, the City of Austin’s Office of Sustainability was interested in sponsoring it since it aligned with the goals of Austin’s Climate Equity Plan. When they agreed to come on board, I was both thrilled and intimidated, and I have to say that it certainly has helped motivate me to make this the best program possible. We want to be able to use this as a blueprint so we can partner with existing organizations in cities around the country, and I’m happy to say those conversations have already started.Do you think local governments should be actively working to decarbonize their citizens’ plates?
Britty Mann: Though many cities are making some effort to acknowledge the growing climate crisis, actually demonstrating a commitment to climate initiatives is easier said than done. I’m lucky to live in a region of Texas where a Climate Plan even exists, let alone one that addresses equity issues. And out of those who are pushing climate initiatives, so few of them are emphasizing anything other than transportation and landfill-related emissions solutions.
I think that while it’s incredibly important and impactful when local governments sponsor, enact or legislate in the direction of a more sustainable local food system, any initiative is really at the mercy of what the public is willing to fight for. The best way to create local change is to support the efforts of existing grassroots organizations working with city governments, and if those don’t exist, sometimes you can even start one yourself!
Lead image courtesy of Planted Society.
The post ‘It’s Scary For Businesses To Take Risks’: Britty Mann of Planted Society on Vegan Menu Activism appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
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An analysis of book bans across the U.S. has found that Texas had more prohibitions than any other state in the country.
The analysis, conducted by PEN America, a nonprofit organization that promotes free expression and human rights, found that 1,648 titles have been banned by schools across the entire country. A lot of these books had LGBTQ themes, featured Black or Brown characters, or explored themes of feminism.
No state had banned more books than Texas. Across 22 districts in the state, 801 books were banned between July 2021 and June 2022. According to reporting from The Texas Tribune:
The most frequent books removed included “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe, which depicts Kobabe’s journey of gender identity and sexual orientation; “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison; “Roe v. Wade: A Woman’s Choice?” by Susan Dudley Gold; “Out of Darkness” by Ashley Hope Pérez, which follows a love story between a Mexican American teenage girl and a Black teen boy in 1930s East Texas; and “All Boys Aren’t Blue” by George M. Johnson, a personal account of growing up black and queer in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Florida took second place, limiting or barring 566 titles in total. Pennsylvania took third place in the analysis, banning 457 books, although a majority of the bans in that state took place in a single district in conservative York County.
Jonathan Friedman, the director of PEN America’s free expression and education programs and the lead author of the report, condemned the book bans by these and other school districts.
“This rapidly accelerating movement has resulted in more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship,” Friedman said in a statement.
The banning of books is “especially harmful to students from historically marginalized backgrounds, who are forced to experience stories that validate their lives vanishing from classrooms and library shelves,” Friedman added.
Students in some of the Texas districts that have banned books have taken action against their school libraries and curricula for denying access to these titles. In Katy Independent School District, for example, more than 100 students formed a club to distribute banned books to their peers last school year.
Maghan Sadeghi, who was a high school senior earlier this year in the district, told The Texas Tribune why she felt it was necessary to take part in the student-led project.
Schools are “OK with heterosexual scenes, heterosexual ideas,” she noted. “But the second something turns slightly, slightly queer, slightly homosexual, it discomforts them. It’s the same thing with [people of color] viewpoints. Why do we have to remove books about Black people and Asian Americans simply for the sake of white people’s comfort?”
A majority of Texan residents oppose efforts to ban books, according to polling conducted by the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project earlier this year. 62 percent of residents in the state said they opposed districts taking action to remove certain books from school libraries, while only 29 percent said they supported the bans.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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A Texas judge has ordered the state to halt investigations into families providing gender-affirming care to their children if they belong to PFLAG, an LGBTQ-aligned organization.
The order from Travis County District Judge Amy Clark Meachum was issued on Friday and only applies to Texas-based members of PFLAG who are at risk of being investigated by officials. The judge’s specificity over who is protected from intrusive and unnecessary investigations was due to limitations the state Supreme Court had placed on a previous order issued by Meachum.
Inquiries into these families were prompted by an executive order earlier this year from Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas), who instructed the state Department of Family and Protective Services to conduct “a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances” of gender-affirming care, which his order wrongly characterized as “abusive procedures.”
Meachum had actually placed an injunction on Abbott’s order shortly after it was issued. But the state Supreme Court overruled Meachum’s original action, and stated that Texas officials could still pursue these investigations. Lower courts could also impose blocks of Abbott’s executive action, but only for specific plaintiffs, not broadly as Meachum had done.
In her order on Friday, Meachum ruled that members of PFLAG, which had sued on behalf of plaintiffs who were being investigated by the state under Abbott’s decree, should be shielded from being harassed by the state. Meachum issued her order on the basis that there was “a substantial likelihood” that the litigants would be successful in suing to stop the inquiry.
Without the injunction, Meachum added in her order, families being investigated by the state would “suffer probable, imminent, and irreparable injury in the interim.”
Contrary to the claims made in Abbott’s order, gender-affirming care is far from being “abusive” — in fact, it has the potential to be lifesaving.
Such care includes a wide range of treatments, from verbal therapy to medicine or even surgery in some cases. For children, however, treatment options rarely, if ever, include surgery; instead, most medical treatment for trans youth involves the use of reversible puberty blockers.
Medical experts largely agree that gender-affirming care for trans youth is more than just safe — it’s also deeply beneficial. In a University of Washington study published in February on the outcome of using puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormone treatments for individuals aged 13-20, such treatments were associated with 60 percent lower odds of moderate or severe depression and 73 percent lower odds of suicidality a year after the treatments began.
Columbia University’s Department of Psychiatry has also confirmed that gender-affirming care is beneficial for trans youth. “Research demonstrates that gender-affirming care…greatly improves the mental health and overall well-being of gender diverse, transgender, and nonbinary children and adolescents,” the department said in a statement in March.
State laws and policies like Texas’s “run counter to scientific evidence [and] also threaten the mental health of transgender and nonbinary youth,” the department went on.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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A federal judge’s ruling in Texas has thrown into question whether millions of insured Americans will continue to receive some preventive medical services, such as cancer screenings and drugs that protect people from HIV infection, without making a copayment.
It’s the latest legal battle over the Affordable Care Act, and Wednesday’s ruling is almost certain to be appealed.
A key part of the ruling by Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas says one way that preventive services are selected for the no-cost coverage is unconstitutional. Another portion of his ruling says a requirement that an HIV prevention drug therapy be covered without any cost to patients violates the religious freedom of an employer who is a plaintiff in the case.
It is not yet clear what all this means for insured patients. A lot depends on what happens next.
O’Connor is likely familiar to people who have followed the legal battles over the ACA, which became law in 2010. In 2018, he ruled that the entire ACA was unconstitutional. For this latest case, he has asked both sides to outline their positions on what should come next in filings due Sept. 16.
After that, the judge may make clear how broadly he will apply the ruling. O’Connor, whose 2018 ruling was later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court, has some choices. He could say the decision affects only the conservative plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit, expand it to all Texans, or expand it to every insured person in the U.S. He also might temporarily block the decision while any appeals, which are expected, are considered.
“It’s quite significant if his ruling stands,” said Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and the Law Initiative at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.
We asked experts to weigh in on some questions about what the ruling might mean.
What does the ACA require on preventive care?
Under a provision of the ACA that went into effect in late 2010, many services considered preventive are covered without a copayment or deductible from the patient.
A recent estimate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that more than 150 million people with insurance had access to such free care in 2020.
The federal government currently lists 22 broad categories of coverage for adults, an additional 27 for women, and 29 for children.
To get on those lists, vaccines, screening tests, drugs, and services must have been recommended by one of three groups of medical experts. But the ruling in the Texas case centers on recommendations from only one group: the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a nongovernmental advisory panel whose volunteer experts weigh the pros and cons of screening tests and preventive treatments.
Procedures that get an “A” or “B” recommendation from the task force must be covered without cost to the insured patient and include a variety of cancer screenings, such as colonoscopies and mammograms; cholesterol drugs for some patients; and screenings for diabetes, depression, and sexually transmitted diseases.
Why didn’t the ACA simply spell out what should be covered for free?
“As a policymaker, you do not want to set forth lists in statutes,” said Christopher Condeluci, a health policy attorney who served as tax and benefits counsel to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee during the drafting of the ACA. One reason, he said, is that if Congress wrote its own lists, lawmakers would be “getting lobbied in every single forthcoming year by groups wanting to get on that list.”
Putting it in an independent body theoretically insulated such decisions from political influence and lobbying, he and other experts said.
What did the judge say?
It’s complicated, but the judge basically said that using the task force recommendations to compel insurers or employers to offer the free services violates the Constitution.
O’Connor wrote that members of the task force, which is convened by a federal health agency, are actually “officers of the United States” and should therefore be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
The decision does not affect recommendations made by the other two groups of medical experts: the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which makes recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccinations, and the Health Resources and Services Administration, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services that has set free coverage rules for services aimed mainly at infants, children, and women, including birth control directives.
Many of the task force’s recommendations are noncontroversial, but a few have elicited an outcry from some employers, including the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. They argue they should not be forced to pay for services or treatment they disagree with, such as HIV prevention drugs.
Part of O’Connor’s ruling addressed that issue separately, agreeing with the position taken by plaintiff Braidwood Management, a Christian, for-profit corporation owned by Steven Hotze, a conservative activist who has brought other challenges to the ACA and to coronavirus mask mandates. Hotze challenged the requirement to provide free coverage of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) drugs that prevent HIV. He said it runs afoul of his religious beliefs, including making him “complicit in facilitating homosexual behavior, drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman,” according to the ruling.
O’Connor said forcing Braidwood to provide such free care in its insurance plan, which it funds itself, violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
What about no-copay contraceptives, vaccines, and other items that are covered under recommendations from other groups not targeted by the judge’s ruling?
The judge said recommendations or requirements from the other two groups do not violate the Constitution, but he asked both parties to discuss the ACA’s contraceptive mandate in their upcoming filings. Currently, the law requires most forms of birth control to be offered to enrollees without a copayment or deductible, although courts have carved out exceptions for religious-based employers and “closely held businesses” whose owners have strong religious objections.
The case is likely to be appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“We will have a conservative court looking at that,” said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “So I would not say that the vaccines and the women’s health items are totally safe.”
Does this mean my mammogram or HIV treatment won’t be covered without a copayment anymore?
Experts say the decision probably won’t have an immediate effect, partly because appeals are likely and they could continue for months or even years.
Still, if the ruling is upheld by an appellate court or not put on hold while being appealed, “the question for insurers and employers will come up on whether they should make changes for 2023,” said Keith.
Widespread changes next year are unlikely, however, because many insurers and employers have already drawn up their coverage rules and set their rates. And many employers, who backed the idea of allowing the task force to make the recommendations when the ACA was being drafted, might not make substantial changes even if the ruling is upheld on appeal.
“I just don’t see employers for most part really imposing copays for stuff they believe is actually preventive in nature,” said James Gelfand, president of the ERISA Industry Committee, which represents large, self-insured employers.
For the most part, Gelfand said, employers are in broad agreement on the preventive services, although he noted that covering every type or brand of contraceptive without a patient copayment is controversial and that some employers have cited religious objections to covering some services, including the HIV preventive medications.
Religious objections aside, future decisions may have financial consequences. As insurers or employers look for ways to hold down costs, they might reinstitute copayments or deductibles for some of the more expensive preventive services, such as colonoscopies or HIV drugs.
“With some of the higher-ticket items, we could see some plans start cost sharing,” said Corlette.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
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This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.