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dontmean2bepoliticalbut · 2 years

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 4 months

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Since we're heading into winter...

The Supreme Court of Texas narrowly decided Friday that sovereign immunity, which largely shields government agencies from civil lawsuits, also protects the operator of the Texas electric grid.

The 5-4 opinion will likely free the nonprofit corporation from lawsuits filed by thousands of Texans for deaths, injuries and damages following the deadly 2021 winter storm, unless lawyers find another way forward.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the power supply for most of Texas, qualifies for immunity because it “provides an essential governmental service,” Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote in the majority opinion. State law intended for ERCOT to have the power of an “arm of the State government,” Hecht wrote. If anyone is going to hold ERCOT accountable for its actions, Hecht wrote, it should be state regulators or the Legislature, not the courts.

Freezing temperatures gripped the state during the 2021 winter storm, straining the power supply so much that ERCOT called for cutting power to millions of homes and businesses to prevent the grid’s collapse. More than 200 people died. Experts estimated afterward that financial losses totaled between $80 billion and $130 billion, including physical damage and missed economic opportunity.

Thousands of residents accused ERCOT, power companies and distribution companies of failing to prepare for the freezing weather.

Lawyers expect the high court’s decision will allow ERCOT to be dismissed from the litigation, although it does not shield other defendants.

Attorney Mia Lorick, who represents some of those plaintiffs, said she sees only a slim possibility that lawyers could keep claims against ERCOT alive by arguing that their cases have differences that somehow skirt the sovereign immunity finding.

Majed Nachawati, whose firm is representing other plaintiffs in the related cases said, “The Texas Supreme Court’s decision is disappointing to say the least. People lost their lives and the only recourse to the citizens of Texas is to be able to go through the judicial process, and the judicial system, to try to remedy or right the wrong that occurred in this case. And if you can’t count on our judiciary to protect its citizens, I think we’re in a lot of trouble.”

Justices Jeff Boyd and John Devine, along with two others, disagreed that ERCOT has sovereign immunity. Purely private entities are clearly not sovereign, and making them so undermines the public trust, they wrote. The justices argued that “no statute designates ERCOT as a part of the government” and that courts should not be barred from hearing claims against it.

The ruling sprang from two cases filed against ERCOT. San Antonio’s municipally owned utility, CPS Energy, alleged that ERCOT mishandled the soaring price of power during the 2021 winter storm. And private equity investors at Panda Power Funds alleged that 10 years earlier ERCOT issued reports that misled them about how much power the grid needed.

ERCOT spokespersons issued a statement saying that the organization was pleased with the decision. CPS Energy said in a statement that it was disappointed but thankful that four justices agreed with the utility as it sought relief for customers. The utility said the litigation still led to “critical discussions at the highest levels that are necessary to improve our power grid and energy market.”

#us politics #news #texas #texas supreme court #ercot #the texas tribune #2023 #Electric Reliability Council of Texas #Chief Justice Nathan Hecht #Mia Lorick #Majed Nachawati #Justice Jeff Boyd #Justice John Devine #CPS Energy #winter weather #power outages #freezing #winter

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raulesparzascheerleader · 2 years

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wow. :( i have always known about the walkout, but i do not remember learning about it. it is a shame that younger generations are not as aware of it like many of our elders are. history is not something to be ignored, because it makes someone feel bad. history is to be taught in order to prevent it to repeat itself. you may not like what you learn, but no one has the right to stop anyone else from learning.

it continues to strike a chord with me for a multitude of reasons, but one reason is that i understand what it is like to be told to speak a certain way. i would be at least fully bilingual if some of my family members from a nearby state were not told to "speak white", which meant they were expected to speak english only. never stop fighting for what is right. learn. love one another. 💕

#uvalde #texas #history #walkout #the texas tribune

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xtruss · 2 months

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Check Your State: Here Are The Active Shooter Training Requirements For Schools And Law Enforcement

— By Lexi Churchill and Lomi Kriel | February 8, 2024 | Frontline

Santa Fe , Texas — May 21: Crosses line the lawn in front of Santa Fe High School on May 21, 2018 in Santa Fe, Texas. The crosses are a memorial to the victims of the May 18 shooting when 17-year-old student Dimitrios Pagourtzis entered the school with a shotgun and a pistol and opened fire, killing 10 people. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

After a teenage gunman killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in 2018, Texas lawmakers mandated that all school police officers receive training to better prepare them for the possibility of confronting a mass shooter. The law, which required that such training occur only once, didn’t apply to thousands of state and local law enforcement officers who did not work in schools.

Four years later, officers who descended on Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School, a vast majority of whom were not school police, repeatedly acted in ways that ran contrary to what active shooter training teaches, waiting 77 minutes to engage the gunman. An investigation published in December by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE revealed that about 30% of the 116 state and local officers who responded in May 2022 did not get active shooter training after graduating from police academies. Of those who had, many received such instruction only once in their careers, which at least eight police training experts say is not enough.

As part of the investigation, the news organizations conducted a nationwide analysis to examine active shooter training requirements and found critical gaps in preparedness between children and law enforcement. While at least 37 states require active shooter-related drills in schools, typically on a yearly basis, no states mandate such training for officers annually.

Instead, decisions about active shooter training are often left to individual school districts and law enforcement departments, creating a patchwork approach in which some proactively provide such instruction and others do not.

The month after the news organizations’ investigation was published, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s office released a scathing report that detailed a slew of failures during the Robb Elementary response. While visiting Uvalde, he told reporters that law enforcement agencies should immediately prioritize active shooter training.

The federal report recommended that officers receive eight hours of such instruction annually. Only Texas, however, comes close to meeting the Department of Justice’s suggested standards, according to the newsrooms’ nationwide analysis. Last year, the state mandated that all officers, not just school police, take 16 hours of active shooter training every two years.

About a dozen states also increased training requirements after the Uvalde shooting, but many continue to fall short of what police training experts say is needed.

The gaps in training requirements begin before officers’ first day on the job.

While police academies in nearly every state require some form of active shooter training, five states — California, Georgia, Ohio, Washington and Vermont — do not require it for all recruits. A spokesperson for the police standards agency in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. A Vermont spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether expanding active shooter training to all officers in police academies is being considered. Officials with police standards agencies in the other three states said they are considering adding active shooter training to their police academy curriculum.

Once officers graduate from police academies, the lack of training requirements becomes more pronounced.

Only two states — Texas and Michigan — have laws that require active shooter training for all officers once on the job. While Texas requires recurring instruction, training in Michigan is given once after officers graduate from police academies. Some states mandate active shooter training one time in a particular year, leaving out officers who were not employed at the time. Other states require training only for school police, as Texas did before the Uvalde shooting, and only two of them — Illinois and Mississippi — require it more than once.

While a majority of states require frequent active shooter-related drills in schools, 13 don’t require such instruction. They include Colorado and Connecticut, which had two of the worst mass shootings in history: the 1999 Columbine school massacre and the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. Spokespeople for the education departments in both states said districts are conducting drills despite the absence of a state mandate but did not provide records that confirm their assertions.

Active shooter training can be expensive, but state lawmakers should commit to providing the necessary instruction if they want law enforcement to be better prepared for a mass shooting, police training experts said. John Curnutt, assistant director at Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center, said Uvalde is a “horrible example” of when training was needed but hadn’t been practiced enough.

“There’s a higher price that’s paid than the one that we probably could have paid upfront to get ready for it,” Curnutt said.

Statewide Active Shooter Training and Drill Requirements as of 2023

Source: State laws and regulations compiled by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE. Information is current as of December 2023. Lucas Waldron/ProPublica

About This Research:

To confirm the most up-to-date active shooter training requirements for law enforcement and schools across the country as of 2023, we contacted education departments and law enforcement standards agencies in every state. We examined both state laws and regulations.

In our analysis of schools, we included all mandated lockdown and active shooter drills, though some education departments said other types of drills can help prepare students and staff as well. In addition to the 37 states that explicitly require active shooter-related drills, we noted several others that have laws mandating safety drills but allow districts to decide which types of drills to conduct. We did not include those in our total count because the options could range from active shooter drills to earthquake drills.

For law enforcement, we collected information about how many hours of active shooter training are required for recruits going through police academies and for officers once they are on the job. We also asked for statewide data showing how many officers had taken such courses, but few states could provide that information. While we included only states’ current training mandates, four states — Alabama, North Carolina, Maine and Pennsylvania — required officers to train in a particular year but then not again, meaning that only those who were employed at that time received the one-time instruction.

— This article is produced in collaboration with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

#Frontline #US States #Training #Active Shooter #Requirements #Law Enforcement #ProPublica #The Texas Tribune #Lexi Churchill and Lomi Kriel #Thirteen | PBS | Frontline

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cypressnewsreview · 2 years

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A new MAGA: Mothers Against Greg Abbott mobilizes against the incumbent governor seeking a third term

A new MAGA: Mothers Against Greg Abbott mobilizes against the incumbent governor seeking a third term By Patrick Svitek, The Texas Tribune Aug. 11, 2022 “A new MAGA: Mothers Against Greg Abbott mobilizes against the incumbent governor seeking a third term” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about…

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#Front page #Texas politics #The Texas Tribune

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inkletting · 2 years

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#abortion #roe v wade #Texas #the Texas tribune #pro choice #pro life #rights #abortion rights

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sixbucks · 9 months

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HB 900 passed in the Legislature and was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year. It is set to go into effect on Sept. 1 and requires book vendors to assign ratings to books based on the presence of depictions or references to sex. In school libraries, books with a “sexually explicit” rating will be removed from bookshelves. And students who want to check out school library books deemed “sexually relevant” would have to get parental permission first.

#Texas tribune #Texas #booksellers #censorship

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cheerfullycatholic · 1 year

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A clemency petition for death row inmate Andre Thomas was filed Wednesday asking that Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles commute the blind 39-year-old’s sentence to life in prison or grant a reprieve to determine if Thomas is competent to be executed this year. Attached to the clemency petition were letters of support from dozens of Texas mental health professionals and more than 100 Texas faith leaders. Thomas, who first began experiencing hallucinations as a child, is facing an April 5 execution date. “We are united in our conviction that it would be a senseless act of vengeance,” Rev. Dr. Jaime Kowlessar, senior pastor of Dallas City Temple, said during a news conference Wednesday. “The answer to violence is never more violence.”

#texas tribune #andre thomas #tw death #tw mutilation #tw murder #death penalty #anti death penalty

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absmarchive · 2 days

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Interim with RGV lawmakers

#school: university of texas rio grande valley #publication: the rider #year: 2022 #genre: news article #subject matter: texas tribune festival #subject matter: texas

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 10 months

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In a week when parts of the state are getting triple-digit temperatures and weather officials urge Texans to stay cool and hydrated, Gov. Greg Abbott gave final approval to a law that will eliminate local rules mandating water breaks for construction workers.

House Bill 2127 was passed by the Texas Legislature during this year’s regular legislative session. Abbott signed it Tuesday. It will go into effect on Sept. 1.

Supporters of the law have said it will eliminate a patchwork of local ordinances across the state that bog down businesses. The law’s scope is broad but ordinances that establish minimum breaks in the workplace are one of the explicit targets. The law will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin in 2010 and Dallas in 2015 that established 10-minute breaks every four hours so that construction workers can drink water and protect themselves from the sun. It also prevents other cities from passing such rules in the future. San Antonio has been considering a similar ordinance.

Texas is the state where the most workers die from high temperatures, government data shows. At least 42 workers died in Texas between 2011 and 2021 from environmental heat exposure, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Workers’ unions claim this data doesn’t fully reflect the magnitude of the problem because heat-related deaths are often recorded under a different primary cause of injury.

This problem particularly affects Latinos because they represent six out of every 10 construction workers, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Unions expect heat-related deaths to go up if mandated water breaks go away.

“Construction is a deadly industry. Whatever the minimum protection is, it can save a life. We are talking about a human right,” said Ana Gonzalez, deputy director of policy and politics at the Texas AFL-CIO. “We will see more deaths, especially in Texas’ high temperatures.”

The National Weather Service is forecasting highs over 100 degrees in several Texas cities for at least the next seven days.

Heat waves are extreme weather events, often more dangerous than tornadoes, severe thunderstorms or floods. High temperatures kill people, and not just in the workplace. Last year, there were 279 heat-related deaths in Texas, based on data analysis by The Texas Tribune.

In 2022, Texas saw its second-hottest summer on record, and an extreme drought swept the state. This summer is not expected to be as hot as the weather pattern known as La Niña eases, which typically brings dry conditions to Texas, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said.

Still, climate change amplifies the effects of heat waves, said Hosmay Lopez, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who studies heat waves. Climate change causes heat waves to stretch for longer periods of time, reach higher temperatures and occur more often than they would otherwise. The problem is especially pronounced in dry areas of the Southwest due to a lack of vegetation and soil moisture, which in wetter regions produces a cooling effect through evaporation.

At the same time, he added, increased urbanization across the U.S. — especially in places like Texas where cities are expanding — makes more people vulnerable to health dangers from extreme heat due to the “urban island” effect. Essentially, the combination of concrete and buildings, plus a lack of green spaces causes ground-level heat to radiate, increasing the temperature in cities.

“The impact of climate change on extreme heat is not only enhanced [by weather events] but also enhanced through social dynamics as well,” Lopez said.

HB 2127, introduced by state Rep. Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, is perhaps Texas Republicans’ most aggressive attempt to curb progressive policies in the state’s largest, liberal-leaning cities. Under the new law, local governments would be unable to create rules that go beyond what state law dictates in broad areas like labor, agriculture, business and natural resources.

Beyond eliminating mandated water breaks for construction workers, opponents of the legislation argue that it will also make it more difficult for cities and counties to protect tenants facing eviction or to combat predatory lending, excessive noise and invasive species. Labor unions and workers’ rights advocates opposed the law, while business organizations supported it, including the National Federation of Independent Business, a lobbying group with more than 20,000 members in Texas. Abbott said it would “provide a new hope to Texas businesses struggling under burdensome local regulations.”

Supporters of HB 2127 say that local regulations on breaks for construction workers are unnecessary because the right to a safe labor environment is already guaranteed through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Water breaks are better solved by OSHA controls, argued Geoffrey Tahuahua, president of Associated Builders and Contractors of Texas. Tahuahua believes local rules impose a rigid scheme that, unlike OSHA guidelines, does not allow the flexibility needed to tailor breaks to individual job site conditions.

“They try to make one size fits all, and that is not how it should work,” he said. “These ordinances just add confusion and encourage people to do the minimum instead of doing the right thing.”

David Michaels, who was head of OSHA from 2009 to 2017, disagreed with the approach of HB 2127 proponents.

“Under OSHA law, it is employers who are responsible to make sure workers are safe,” said Michaels, now a professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health. “And we have compelling evidence that they are doing a very poor job because many workers are injured on the job, especially in Texas.”

Michaels pointed out that OSHA does not have a national standard for heat-related illnesses and issues citations only for over-exposure to heat after an injury or death, but not before that occurs.

“The better solution would be to have a national standard, but since we do not, local ordinances are very important for saving lives,” he said. “Prohibiting these local laws will result in workers being severely hurt or killed.”

Gonzalez, from the Texas AFL-CIO, disagrees with the idea that local regulations hurt businesses.

Mandated water breaks “were passed in 2010 in Austin and construction is still growing, especially in the state’s largest cities,” Gonzalez said. “It is simply false, an excuse to limit local governments’ power and an intrusion into democracy.”

HB 2127 does not impede the enactment of a state law establishing mandatory breaks for construction workers, and during the regular session, two bills were filed to that effect.

House Bill 495, authored by Rep. Thresa Meza, D-Irving, sought to establish 10-minute mandatory breaks every four hours for contractors working for a governmental entity. House Bill 4673, by Rep. Maria Luisa Flores, D-Austin, would have created a statewide advisory board responsible for establishing standards to prevent heat illness in Texas workplaces and set penalties for employers who do not comply with them.

Neither bill made it through the legislative process.

Daniela Hernandez, state legislative coordinator for the Workers Defense Project, said she hopes legislators will push for a state law mandating water breaks for workers. She added that she would not discard the possibility that cities sue to try to keep their water break ordinances.

“Without an ordinance or a law, there is no safeguard. There is no guarantee that the worker will have those water breaks,” he said. “We will keep fighting.”

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jkanelis · 11 days

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Courts have become political

Our nation’s founders, the men who crafted a federal judiciary they intended to remain “above politics,” surely are doing somersaults in their graves. The nation’s federal judiciary has become a third political branch of government, not a branch intended only to determine the constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress and signed by the president. Democratic senators have signed a petition…

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#federal judiciary #Founding Fathers #MAGA #Texas Tribune #US Constitution

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cypressnewsreview · 2 years

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Texas Tribune: Waiting for keys, unable to break down doors: Uvalde schools police chief defends delay in confronting gunman

By James Barragán and Zach Despart, The Texas Tribune June 9, 2022 “Waiting for keys, unable to break down doors: Uvalde schools police chief defends delay in confronting gunman” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. Editor’s note: This…

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#Front page #Law enforcement #Texas politics #The Texas Tribune

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redsnerdden · 3 months

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Appeals Court Blocks Texas From Enforcing Book Rating Law

Victory! Appeals Court Blocks Texas From Enforcing Book Rating Law #Texas #Books #Manga #GraphicNovels #Politics

Three months ago, Judge Alan D. Albright struck down the enforcement of HB 900 (better known as the READER ACT), which would require any vendor who wishes to sell books to the Texas Public School System to provide ratings as to the level of Sexual explicitness. Recently, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has blocked the Texas Education Agency from enforcing the Reader Act, dealing another blow to…

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#5th Circuit Court of Appeals #Books #Censorship #Graphic Novels #LGBTQIA+#Manga #Reader Act #Texas #Texas Education Agency #Texas Government #Texas Law HB 900 #Texas Tribune #The Appellate Court #writing

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transpondster · 3 months

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Full documentary: Inside the Uvalde Response

FRONTLINE + @ProPublica + @texastribune

The Department of Justice released a report on Uvalde today, but this late 2023 documentary contains recordings and video footage that explains how and why the police response to the Uvalde shooting failed. It’s really something to see.

One simple example: The police inside the school assumed students and teachers attending the school had been sent home because it was so quiet inside. Super quiet. But, actually, the teachers and students had been taught during their school shooter training to be as quiet as possible. They were the only ones who actually followed their shooter training and as a result the police didn’t check the classrooms or evacuate anyone for nearly an hour.

Neither the documentary nor the DOJ report really address the question of how the shooter acquired his weapon, although the deadliness of the gun played a big part in the police decision not to confront him for over 70 minutes.

#uvalde #frontline #pro publica #texas tribune #school shooting #police

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dontfightyourwaralone · 6 months

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#september 2023 #2023 #articles #texas tribune #Alejandro Serrano #William Melhado #drag #homophobia #transphobia

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clairwil · 7 months

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Can the Center Hold?

Hurrah! It’s the fabulous Julie Mason, Texan bred, once a proud journalist at the Houston Chronicle, now working with POTUS, and with Sirius XM Radio. Line up: Kay Bailey Hutchison, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, John H. Sununu, a former Governor of New Hampshire and White House chief of staff, U.S. Sen Evan Bayh. The crisis in Washington: no leadership, adrift…

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#Evan Bayh #Governor Chris Sununu #Henry Cisneros #Julie Mason #Kay Bailey Hutchison #Texas Tribune Festival #TribFest15

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