Here's to the beginning of this community. I'll be posting news articles and such that I come across pertaining to Texas. Please read the rules in the sidebar and be kind to your neighbors!

While I'm not holding my breath, I've been waiting for Texas to turn for most of my life. This year is the best shot we've ever had.

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Texas is a dumpsterfire

Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/51011418

The Brief

• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says he has asked the Justice Deparment to investigate foot-washing stations at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
• Abbott called the stations “discriminatory” in his letter addressed to Attorney General Todd Blanche and equated them to “white-only bathrooms.”
• In the letter, the governor also took issue with a prayer room at Bush Airport that he says has “copies of the Quaran, prayer rugs, prayer beads and a turbah.”

ORLA — Elected officials and industry leaders warn that Texas is at the “precipice” of running out of underground space to dispose of the nearly 1 billion gallons of wastewater that oil and gas production generates every day in the Permian Basin.

The toxic wastewater, known as produced water, is usually injected underground into disposal wells. But these wells have increased underground pressure, triggering earthquakes and blowouts. Instead of underground injection, the oil industry is now seeking alternatives to treat and reuse produced water.

Industry experts made clear last week, at a legislative hearing in Austin and a conference in Midland, that a lack of disposal space could soon constrain oil production in the Permian Basin.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is developing two permitting programs for re-using treated produced water. The agency began accepting permit applications to discharge the treated wastewater into rivers in 2024 but has yet to issue any permits. The agency released a proposed rule earlier this year to allow treated produced water to be applied on land for irrigation or rangeland restoration.

In public testimony last week, Commissioner Jim Wright of the Railroad Commission, which regulates oil and gas, emphasized the urgency of providing alternatives to disposal wells.

“Continued delay could restrict oil and gas development across the Permian Basin,” he said during a Texas Senate hearing. “I respectfully urge TCEQ to finalize and issue workable permits as soon as possible.”

While political pressure mounts on the TCEQ to issue permits, pilot projects using treated produced water are ongoing. Researchers are still gathering data to publish more peer-reviewed papers that will inform the permitting programs. Advocates question whether regulators are jumping the gun by drafting permits as research continues on the safety of treated produced water and treatment technologies.

TCEQ declined an interview request from Inside Climate News. The agency did not respond to individual questions regarding the scientific basis of its rulemakings or when the agency anticipates issuing the first permits for produced water discharges, but it provided a statement.

“TCEQ develops permits that are unique and reflect site-specific conditions of a single entity’s proposed activities and the location of the activity,” spokesperson Victoria Cann wrote. “Permits are drafted to ensure compliance with the Texas Surface Water Quality Standards and protective of drinking water, aquatic life, and other existing uses of the receiving waterway.”

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas-take/article/trump-houston-fundraiser-22391557.php

"It's been the most heartbreaking experience of my life," [noted douchebag from the Change My Mind meme] Crowder said, "But in today's legal system, my beliefs don't matter. In Texas, divorce is permitted when one party wants it, period."

And there we see the mask fall away. An abusive (read the article) douchebag literally wants to hold his spouse in matrimonial jail until he finds someone else he wants to show off in public.

Now, the way the Texas legislature works is that the literally-insane people who write the GOP platform put it in, then someone will write this stupid bill, a few other someones will co-sponsor it, all of them will wave it in front of their donors and the megachurches where they're TOTALLY DEFINITELY NOT campaigning. However, and this is at this point the only reason this state functions at all, the leg is only scheduled to meet one summer every other year, and they have to keep the lights on (though sometimes they flicker...), and they have to come up with some some half-assed response to whatever completely predictable disaster killed a bunch of Texans since they last met.

AND THEN the particular bullshit that the governor and the oddly powerful lieutenant governor want to cram down everyone's throats bubbles to the top of the list and takes up all the remaining oxygen in the room, and any special sessions will be called to bully the leg into passing it. Meanwhile, this even stupider bill exists, but was assigned an agenda number somewhere in the low 100s or beyond, and nothing actually happens, and 90% of these hypocrites breathe a sigh of relief because none of them WANTED to vote for it, but almost all of them would if it actually hit the floor.

For more than a quarter of a century, Texas has diligently updated its state water plan every five years, a process designed to forecast water supply and demand 50 years into the future — and give communities enough warning about potential water shortages to do something about it.

That warning matters because water projects can take years — sometimes decades — to plan, finance and build.

For Corpus Christi and the rest of the Coastal Bend, it never came.

That’s because the planning process is built largely around past droughts — in fact, some regional plans still rely on the epic 1950s drought of record, the longest statewide dry spell in history. But some experts now say using historical droughts isn’t working because climate change is making droughts more frequent, longer and severe — raising doubts that yesterday’s worst-case scenario is also tomorrow’s.

That means the models that help secure money and political will for new water projects may be dramatically underestimating both future water needs and how quickly communities could face shortages.

“We need to be planning and developing infrastructure for the climate of 2050, the climate of 2100,” said Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at Columbia University who studies drought in North America.

Nowhere were the weaknesses more evident than in Corpus Christi. A report released Wednesday by Texas 2036, a nonpartisan think tank that researches the state’s long-term infrastructure, population and economic needs, found that five state water plans adopted over 25 years sent conflicting signals about whether the Coastal Bend region, which includes Corpus Christi, could face shortages in the 2020s.

Crossposted from https://piefed.zip/c/[email protected]/p/1741427/the-pollution-being-churned-out-by-ai-data-centers-is-so-severe-that-it-s-almost-incompreh

As climate action group Floodlight found in a recent investigation spotted by Wired, Texas has become the epicenter of the United States’ current obsession with constructing AI data centers. Companies are exploiting regulatory loopholes as they construct new facilities powered by pollutant-spewing onsite gas plants.

The rate of growth of this “shadow grid” of custom power plants, some of which are big enough to fuel entire cities, is so enormous that the only global entity installing more gigawatts of gas plants than Texas is China, according to environmental group Global Energy Monitor.

Tech companies are lining up to voice support for Gov. Greg Abbott’s audit of data centers seeking to connect to the power grid, although little is known about what the audit will entail or what it means for the data center construction boom.

Since the Aug. 3 announcement, at least 43 companies — including juggernauts like Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services — have issued public statements expressing support for Abbott’s audit, despite the governor ordering regulators to not approve any new grid connections until the audit is completed. The governor has similarly touted their endorsement of his plan.

“We share your commitment to ensuring data centers are true partners in every Texas community where we operate — protecting residential ratepayers, strengthening grid reliability and promoting responsible water stewardship,” read a letter to the governor sent Tuesday by the Data Center Coalition, a trade association representing many of the largest tech companies in the world.

Abbott directed the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid, to conduct the audit, but it’s unknown how long the audit will take, how long the moratorium on grid connections will last, how many data centers will be audited and how the information gathered in the audit will be used by regulators and legislators.

Without these questions answered, it’s unclear how much of this audit will address the public’s concerns about data centers, particularly their impact on energy access, water use and the environment.

Citing polling data that shows growing discontent among rural Texans toward the buildout of data centers and competitive General Election contests for governor and U.S. Senate, Texas Politics Project Director Jim Henson said the moves by Abbott and the companies raise questions about how impactful the audit and freeze of approvals will actually be.

“It’s all very performative, it’s performative on everybody’s part,” Henson said.

Abbott’s office has largely directed questions about the audit to his public statements on the topic since Aug. 3. The PUCT and ERCOT have also remained largely silent on the matter, and the PUCT scheduled an emergency meeting for Friday morning to discuss the issue.

ERCOT did say in a Monday filing it expects the audit will last “several months” and is expected to begin shortly after Aug. 20.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/50609042

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is a defendant in the suit, described the ruling as a “major victory” in a social media post.

Five years ago, Texas passed Senate Bill 1, a wide-reaching election law that changed the way local officials administer elections and how some Texans vote, particularly aimed at initiatives Harris County implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. The law was denounced by voter advocacy groups, civil rights organizations and Democratic lawmakers, who broke quorum in an attempt to stifle the bill.

After several lawsuits over accessibility concerns created by the new law were consolidated into a single suit, a district judge in March 2025 struck down nine of its provisions.

LUBBOCK — The Texas Broadband Development Office placed a temporary hold Tuesday on all disbursements of billions of dollars in federal funds related to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, or BEAD.

The hold comes after the office was accused of favoritism to certain companies, specifically Elon Musk’s Starlink, which led to lawmakers announcing an audit.

In an email obtained by The Texas Tribune, the state broadband office shared with subgrantees that the hold was effective as of Monday, and will be in place “until further notice.” The office did not give a reason as to why the disbursements were paused.

The office did not respond to The Tribune in time for publication.

“No further action is required from subgrantees at this time,” the office said in the email. ”The BDO will provide additional guidance and updates as they become available.”

Last week, Comptroller Don Huffines announced a comprehensive internal review of his office, which includes the broadband office.

Lawmakers began questioning the Broadband Office in June on how it doled out more than $3 billion in BEAD funding. During a Senate committee hearing, Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Republican from Georgetown, said his office heard about the concerns regarding taxpayer money, including how much money was disbursed up-front for the projects. While other providers were only expected to receive 10% of the grant money to start, with the rest dispersed on a tiered system, the rules were changed for low-Earth orbit satellite providers.

According to Bryant Clayton, the BDO’s director, the change was a directive from Gov. Greg Abbott’s office and made just days before the grant was awarded.

In response, Schwertner called for more transparency in the grant award process by the BDO.

“I have my eye on y’all regarding the way y’all are conducting your business,” Schwertner told Clayton. “I don’t care who’s messing with your business, but we, as an oversight committee, are going to oversee it regarding fairness and transparency.”

Starlink is the largest provider of residential broadband service through low-Earth orbit satellites in Texas, and has at least 12 million customers worldwide. Amazon recently began deploying satellites for its own LEO service. Both of the companies were chosen as subgrantees by the BDO.

Sen. Nathan Johnson, a Dallas Democrat running for Texas Attorney General, claimed in a campaign statement that the award process could be corruption from the federal government down.

“Without drawing conclusions for the moment, the whole process may have involved coordinated corruption among the Trump administration, the illegally empowered DOGE czar Musk, private entities (Starlink), the governor’s office and the broadband development office,” Johnson said in the statement.

Earlier this year, a 16-year-old student at a Los Angeles high school was looking forward to starting his junior year, where he planned to try out for the school’s varsity tennis team. His parents were both college psychology professors.

But in April, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested the family, who immigrated from Iran more than a decade ago, after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told immigration officers to revoke their permanent legal status. ICE separated the family, sending them to two different Texas detention centers.

For the past 123 days, the teen and his mother have lived in an immigrant detention facility in Dilley, where he and other detainees share their rooms with swarms of cockroaches, spiders and mosquitoes, he wrote in a sworn affidavit. Meanwhile, his father is at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

“We have been put through hell for the past four months, and our physical and mental health have deteriorated in ways that might not be reversible for years,” Maryam Tahmasebi, his mother, wrote in The Nation on Tuesday. “We are only allowed to speak with my husband for 10 minutes every two weeks, under supervision.”

The teen is one of at least 60 children who the Trump administration has held in the Dilley detention center for 100 days or more — far exceeding the 20-day limit for detaining immigrant children — according to a Texas Tribune analysis of federal government data.

On average, children in the Dilley detention center spend 25 days there — but in a six-month period ending in December, that average peaked at 47 days, according to the Tribune’s analysis.