Tag: Texas

Welcome to Muskville, Texas

Elon Musk, who inhabits the role of a gonzo captain of industry like no other figure in modern American life, has lately been dreaming aloud about building his own version of an old-fashioned company town. And not just dreaming. In September, Bastrop County, Texas, outside Austin, approved the construction of Project Amazing, a subdivision of […]

Read More

Rep. Cori Bush: From Ferguson to the Halls of Congress

In our three-part women’s history month series, The Root sat down with the next generation of Black congresswomen shaking things up on Capitol Hill. You’ll hear from Representatives Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley, and Summer Lee . Each of them will break down how it feels to be the first Black woman to represent their state […]

Read More

Texas GOP Bill Would Ban Students From China and 3 Other Countries From All Public Universities

And money talks. Hoeven has seemingly expressed little public concern about the rail industry since the East Palestine derailment. In 2021, however, he, Cramer, and Armstrong did send a letter to the Surface Transportation Board advocating for the Canadian Pacific, or CP, and Kansas City Southern, or KCS, merger. As The American Prospect reports, Hoeven […]

Read More

Texas White Republicans Announce Plans To Take Over Houston’s Predominately Black School District 

NewsOne Featured Video Source: fotoguy22 / Getty In an obvious power move, Texas Republicans announced on Wednesday their plans to take over Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, which is also majority Black or Hispanic. The state takeover of Houston’s public school district would be one of the largest school takeovers […]

Read More

Texas Judge Hears Case to End Federal Approval of Abortion Pill

AMARILLO, Texas — The first hearing in a closely watched lawsuit seeking to overturn federal approval of a widely used abortion pill concluded Wednesday without a ruling, after more than four hours of pointed and emphatic arguments by both sides. Lawyers for the anti-abortion groups and physicians who had filed the suit claimed that the […]

Read More

Why We’re Barreling Toward a Legal War Between the States

Another source of friction is the laws red states are passing to prevent health insurance companies from covering gender-affirming care anywhere in the U.S. One strategy used by states like Florida is to put an excessive statute of limitations and liability on doctors and health care providers who provide gender-affirming care or coverage. Their goal […]

Read More

In the Gun Law Fights of 2023, a Need for Experts on the Weapons of 1791

Saul Cornell’s corner of academia has historically been sleepy. So few scholars share his specialty that the Fordham University professor jokes that he and his colleagues could hold a national convention “in an English phone booth.” But in the months since a landmark Supreme Court decision upended the standards for determining the constitutionality of gun […]

Read More

Abortion Opponents Want to Make Women Afraid to Get Help From Their Friends

This case has several harrowing implications. First, it makes particularly vivid the way abortion prohibitions give men control over women. In the text messages reproduced in the lawsuit, Silva’s ex-wife wrote, of her pregnancy, that she knew Silva would “use it against me” and “try to act like he has some right to the decision.” […]

Read More

Texas Man Sues Three Women for $1 Million for Helping His Ex-Wife Get an Abortion

The law grinds slowly. Politics, however, like Niagara Falls, never stops. So what are the politics of this? It likely has a marginally positive impact for Trump in a GOP presidential primary. It gives him another target, something else to whine about. I doubt his opponents will really be able to attack him over it; […]

Read More

Kidnapping in Mexico Draws Attention to Medical Tourism

Last week, four Americans were kidnapped in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, after crossing the border from Texas. Two were later found dead. A sister of one of the victims said they had gone to Mexico so one of them could get an abdominoplasty, better known as a tummy tuck. Every year, millions of Americans […]

Read More

If You Read the G.O.P.’s Anti-Trans Policies, You’ll See What It Really Wants

[MUSIC PLAYING] ezra klein I’m Ezra Klein. This is “The Ezra Klein Show.” [MUSIC PLAYING] So the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference wrapped up this past Saturday. And this conference, if you don’t follow it, it’s a big deal every year because it is the clearest window into the id of modern conservatism. It brings […]

Read More

Five Women Sue Texas Over the State’s Abortion Ban

Ms. Zurawski became pregnant in early 2022 after 18 months of fertility treatments. In her 17th week of pregnancy, and the day after she made the guest list for her baby shower, a scan found that her cervical membranes had begun to prolapse. Specialists told her that her fetus, which she had begun thinking of […]

Read More

5 Dead as Storms and Tornadoes Barrel Across the South

A powerful storm system barreled across the South on Friday, unleashing severe winds, tornadoes and heavy rain, and killing five people, including a grandfather in Arkansas swept in a flooded roadway as he traveled to see his grandson, officials said. “The thunderstorms are producing 80 mph winds — treat them like tornadoes,” Gov. Andy Beshear […]

Read More

Texas GOP Wants To Ban Books With Gay Characters From School Libraries

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will not be at CPAC, which comes as a surprise given all his efforts to stay in Trump’s good graces. Neither will Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has become a Trump critic despite using the former president to push through conservative judges and legislation. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel […]

Read More

A Texas GOP Bill Wants To Stop Credit Card Companies From Processing Your Abortion Pill Payment

Other parts of the Bill of Rights seem to fearmonger and imply that parents are never listened to in schools. The bill calls for school districts to consider community feedback when making decisions, allow parents to address school boards, and notify parents of violent activity happening on school grounds. These are already more-or-less standard practices […]

Read More

Texas GOP Bill Would Give Major Tax Cut to Straight, Never-Divorced Parents

Other parts of the Bill of Rights seem to fearmonger and imply that parents are never listened to in schools. The bill calls for school districts to consider community feedback when making decisions, allow parents to address school boards, and notify parents of violent activity happening on school grounds. These are already more-or-less standard practices […]

Read More

A New Texas Bill Seeks To Ban Abortion Pill Websites Statewide

“Faced with the prospect of serving a fine meal to a person whose actions in the service of our country we felt violated basic standards of humanity, we balked. We couldn’t do it,” the owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, said in a 2019 op-ed in The Washington Post. Wilkinson said her request was discreet and polite, and […]

Read More

America, Right-Wing Censors, and the ‘Battle for the Next Century’

When Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law limiting D.E.I. in the workplace last April, Rufo likened him to Teddy Roosevelt and praised his “muscular” strategy for combating “corporate malfeasance.” “Conservatives,” he wrote, “need to build on these efforts by developing a comprehensive agenda for pushing back against left-wing ideology in corporate America.” In […]

Read More

How Climate Change Is Making Tampons (and Lots of Other Stuff) More Expensive

When the Agriculture Department finished its calculations last month, the findings were startling: 2022 was a disaster for upland cotton in Texas, the state where the coarse fiber is primarily grown and then sold around the globe in the form of tampons, cloth diapers, gauze pads and other products. In the biggest loss on record, […]

Read More

Texas Attorney General Agrees to Give $3.3 Million and an Apology to Former Aides

HOUSTON — The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, agreed to pay $3.3 million in a settlement with four former senior aides who said he had retaliated against them after they accused him of corruption and other crimes. Mr. Paxton agreed not only to the payment — which would come from state funds — but also […]

Read More

How U.S.-China Tensions Could Affect Who Buys the House Next Door

The share of United States farmland owned by Chinese people and companies is small and has not been growing substantially. Chinese owners held about 350,000 acres at the end of 2020, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, and most of the farmland came from the Chinese acquisition of Smithfield Foods in 2013. Canadian […]

Read More

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Who Apparently Has Nothing Better To Do, Wants A ‘Statewide’ Ban Of TikTok

Texas governor Greg Abbott has responded to an “epic” ice storm that left at least eight people dead and hundreds of thousands without electricity by… vowing to ban TikTok. “Announcing today a statewide plan to ban TikTok. Texans, especially our state agencies and employees, must be protected from having sensitive information shared with the Chinese […]

Read More

After Storm, Austin Residents Deal With Power Outages and Downed Trees

AUSTIN, Texas — Warmer weather has returned to Austin, Texas, after the winter storm that began to hit the state last Monday. It was a balmy 73 degrees in the city on Sunday. But to many residents in and around the capital who were still dealing with the storm’s fallout, progress in the recovery seemed […]

Read More

Days after an ice storm, thousands in the capital of Texas are still without power.

People across the northeastern United States confronted the coldest temperatures seen in decades on Saturday, as an Arctic air mass passed over the region, accompanied by powerful winds that drove wind chills to dangerous levels. Frigid conditions demolished records set more than a century ago in Boston and Providence, where lows hit minus 10 and […]

Read More

A Brief History of Spying With Balloons

A Chinese balloon seen hovering over Montana this week has been described as an “intelligence-gathering” airship by the Pentagon and a stray civilian research airship by China. Whatever its intended use, the balloon offers a reminder of how for more than a century, governments have used balloons for surveillance and observation, most often during times […]

Read More

Power Outages Linger in Texas After Deadly Ice Storm

Air travel disruptions improved on Thursday. More than 700 flights within, into or out of the United States, were canceled, including more than 300 flights at airports in Dallas and Austin, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking company. The number of canceled flights on Thursday was an improvement over Wednesday, when more than 2,300 flights were […]

Read More

Court Rules That Domestic Abusers Can Possess Firearms

Arrington went on to attack a government program that hasn’t even happened. “There’s a whole of government assault for all the world to see on an industry: American energy,” he lamented. “And it’s being replaced with this Green New Deal—hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies, tax credits, grants,” Arrington continued, horrified at the idea […]

Read More