Texas

At a time when Republican leaders are increasingly targeting the state's growing Muslim communities, barbecue joints like Goldee's that offer halal options are thriving in Texas. Across the state, Muslim pitmasters are gaining recognition for putting their own spin on one of Texas' most iconic culinary traditions.

At least a dozen barbecue spots now serve halal meats, including Yearby's Barbecue & Waterice, run by Black Muslim couple CJ and Sabrina Henley, soon-to-be in Plano, and Levant Mediterranean BBQ, a restaurant with locations in Houston and Frisco and whose all-beef menu includes a brisket shawarma sandwich.

"Now there are so many options, and for us to have highly rated barbecue, it's a blessing," said Haris Ghaffar, who drove an hour from Celina and stood in 90-degree weather for nearly two hours with a friend for the halal options at Goldee's.

archive site not working, so for now, alternates here: https://news.google.com/search?q=trump+10+million+texas+race

A caver dropped into a hole in the limestone of Comal County, Texas, put his face into the underground stream at the bottom, and found the streambed paved with bones.

John Young photographed what he could see and sent the images to John Moretti, a palaeontologist at the University of Texas at Austin, expecting an identification and possibly a polite thank you. Moretti asked to come and look himself. What followed, written up in a paper published in Quaternary Research, is the first palaeontological study ever made of a Texas water cave.

Possession of products containing delta-8 and other forms of THC are still a state felony after the Texas officials banned the substances earlier this year.

[…]

The Texas Supreme Court decision, however, said trace amounts of these substances are allowed in hemp products. However, the court did not define what it meant by “trace amounts.”

That’s why hemp businesses such as SS Distro USA LLC and Topps Distro filed suit against the state. Their attorney David Sergi argued in Travis County District Court that trace amounts must be defined if the state hopes to enforce this restriction, and it must be done through a rule-making process.

The businesses hoped a judge would grant a temporary restraining order, putting a halt on the ban. The judge ruled otherwise.

More than 750 nesting boxes now hang on fence lines, park edges, schoolyard posts and backyard trees across eight Texas counties, and every one of them was cut, assembled and put up by the same pair of hands. The builder is Aamir Tinwala, of Coppell, a Dallas suburb wedged between the airport and the prairie remnants of the Elm Fork. The boxes are plain untreated wood — no stain, no sealant, nothing that would off-gas into a chamber where an animal the weight of a few paper clips will spend its first two weeks alive.

Tarrant County commissioners voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve a list of polling sites for the November elections that included 92 fewer sites than the 2022 midterms.

The approval came after commissioners heard testimony from more than 100 speakers, the majority of whom were opposed to the site cuts, during a meeting that lasted over eight hours. Voting rights advocates and representatives of 30 civic groups rallied outside the county courthouse Tuesday morning, demanding that commissioners approve a list with the same number of sites as the 2022 midterms.

The adopted list includes 224 sites for Election Day and 47 for early voting. The 2022 list included 316 Election Day sites and 50 for early voting.

“I’m confident that what is proposed is going to give everybody that wants to vote the opportunity to vote,” said county elections administrator Clint Ludwig, who proposed the reduction.

Commissioners voted along party lines, with Republicans — County Judge Tim O’Hare and commissioners Matt Krause and Manny Ramirez — supporting the list, and Democratic commissioners Alisa Simmons and Roderick Miles Jr. voting against.

The list of places:

San Marcos, Austin, Hays County, Hood County, Bandera, Aransas Pass, Burnet County, Guadalupe County, Lago Vista, Magnolia, Kendall County, Pflugerville, Wylie, Robinson, Bastrop, Dallas, Leander, Elgin, Manor, El Paso

More info in the article, of course

Texas and Missouri are serving up opposite arguments about the impacts of swapping election maps between their primaries and the midterms, but whether that’s allowable or a constitutional crisis depends on which state you’re in and whether Republicans will benefit.

Missouri’s GOP state officials say they are taking the extraordinary step of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule a unanimous Missouri Supreme Court decision Thursday barring the state from using its newly gerrymandered congressional map for the upcoming election.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway and other state GOP figures are crying foul, saying reverting to the original House of Representatives districts will be confusing for voters who will now see different candidates in the general election than they did in the primaries.

In Texas, it’s the opposite. There, the Republicans redrew local voting maps for Galveston County after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act despite already holding the primary.

It makes me wonder what Texas didn’t teach me during the 90s and 00s or what slant was on what they DID teach me.

September’s convention will be the first time in more than 40 years to be hosted in Dallas, now a Democratic-majority city, as opposed to its neighboring city Fort Worth. Dallas was considered a strong Republican city the last time a convention was hosted in 1984.

Fort Worth has historically been a GOP-friendly city in a county governed by a conservative majority.

It raises the question: Why bring the convention to Dallas rather than Fort Worth?

One reason could be because of Dallas’ large media market, said Brian Mayes, a Dallas political consultant.

The Ross Fire began Aug. 24 near U.S. Highway 180 in Palo Pinto County. When the forest service first responded, 80 acres had already burned. It grew to burn 50,000 acres by the following day, spreading to Jack County.

Currently, over 90,000 acres have been burned due to the Ross Fire. The disaster destroyed 167 structures, including 18 occupied structures, according to the forest service. First responders have saved 453 threatened structures as of Sept. 4.

Gov. Greg Abbott announced Aug. 25 that the state had received a Fire Management Assistance Grant from FEMA. The state is eligible through the grant for a 75% reimbursement from the federal government in costs made to suppress the wildfire.

United Way of Palo Pinto County began leading disaster relief efforts in the area after a tornado caused damage in Mineral Wells and surrounding areas in May. The Texas Division of Emergency Management then asked the nonprofit to spearhead relief work, Burkhall said.

The nonprofit ended up distributing over $300,000 to 65 families affected by the tornado. Burkhall is not yet sure how many families will need support for damages caused by the wildfire.

According to the System’s own project justification, the existing tower maintains water pressure of just 51 to 55 pounds per square inch — no longer enough to meet fire-protection and irrigation demands as new buildings, including the Semiconductor Institute, come online. Every new building at RELLIS currently needs its own separate pumps just to bring water pressure up to code.

The new tower is designed to fix that campus-wide, rather than building by building.

Albritton said reliable utilities are just as important to attracting major projects as the research itself.

“You need two things: electricity and water,” Albritton said. “we have to know we have consistent water that we can, for people that want to come, that we can assure them that water will not be an issue.”

Albritton described the new tower as “an outward sign of making sure everybody realizes we have the water to service whatever it is you want to bring.”

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have violated federal ethics law in significant ways when filing recent disclosures of his assets and liabilities, creating confusion about his net worth and holdings, a review by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune found.

Among them: Paxton, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, reported owning seven homes but said he earned no income from any. Yet all but one was listed for rent during the reporting periods, and some current residents and neighbors at those addresses confirmed that the properties were rented, the news organizations found. Receiving income and not reporting it is a violation of federal disclosure law, three ethics experts said.

Additionally, Paxton did not disclose mortgages for three condos at a Utah golf resort that federal law requires him to list as liabilities if they are not personal residences.

He also valued his stake in a vacant plot of Texas land at up to $50,000 on last year’s filing, but his business partner told the newsrooms Paxton’s share for years has been worth about $1 million. Federal financial disclosure law requires property to be listed at fair market value.

The apparent errors and omissions the newsrooms found obscure the extent of Paxton’s income streams, assets and debt, making it difficult for voters to make sense of his finances as they mull whether to support him in November’s election, the ethics experts said.

“It reflects either pure sloppiness on Paxton’s part or a deliberate effort to conceal some of his investments and property holdings,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for the nonpartisan good-government group Public Citizen.

If Paxton wins, an incomplete picture of his finances could prevent watchdogs from evaluating his conflicts of interest as a senator, Holman and others said.

The apparent omissions are part of a pattern for Paxton. Over three terms as attorney general, he has withheld financial information that could explain how he became a multimillionaire and had the resources to purchase more than a dozen properties in five states. He began including many of these on his state disclosures only after the Texas Ethics Commission closed a loophole in 2024 that Paxton had cited to leave them off. Most were acquired while Paxton earned a government salary of $153,750.

In the new federal disclosure, filed in August after Paxton received a three-month extension, he reported a net worth between $1 million and $27 million. That is a significantly higher range than the negative $1.9 million to $11.1 million net worth he reported a year ago, before he had secured the Republican nomination but after he had declared his candidacy for federal office.

The spike was driven not by Paxton’s acquisition of more assets but because the reported value on several of his properties soared.

Paxton’s report omitted listing as assets seven properties worth about $5.2 million collectively, including the Utah condos for which he did not disclose mortgages. He co-owns all of his known real estate holdings with his estranged wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, property records show. The eight he reported are held by their blind trust, which is managed by a family friend.

Federal rules do not require candidates to report as assets personal homes or properties from which they don’t earn money, even if the properties are worth millions.

At a time when voters feel anxious about their own personal finances and dislike the idea of politicians getting rich in office, it would be wise for Paxton to be more transparent about his wealth, said Texas ethics and campaign finance lawyer Andrew Cates.

“If it were me trying to get people’s vote, I would err on the side of transparency rather than not,” Cates said.