- Republican effort to remove Libertarians from November ballot rejected by Texas Supreme Court.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Republican effort to remove a host of Libertarian candidates from the November ballot, saying the GOP did not bring their challenge soon enough.
On Aug. 8, a group of Republican candidates asked the Supreme Court to remove 23 Libertarians from the ballot, saying they did not meet eligibility requirements. The Republicans included Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and others in congressional and state legislative races.
State law requires Libertarian candidates to pay filing fees or gather petition signatures, the amount of each depending on the office sought. The Libertarian Party has been challenging that law in federal court, arguing it is unfair because the fees do not go toward their nomination process like they do for Democrats and Republicans.
- What brought down one Texas county’s entire elections department? It was something in the water.
Last November’s sleepy constitutional amendment election nearly came to blows in Gillespie County, a Central Texas county known for its vineyards. A volunteer poll watcher, whose aggressive behavior had rankled election workers all day, attempted to force his way into a secure ballot vault.
The burly man was repeatedly blocked by a county elections staffer. Shouting ensued. “You can’t go in there,” the staffer, Terry Hamilton, insisted to the man, who towered over Hamilton. “We can see anything we want!” the poll watcher and his fellow election integrity activists yelled, according to an election worker who witnessed the scene. They accused Hamilton and elections administrator Anissa Herrera of a variety of violations of the state election code, which they quoted line by line.
“Oh Lord, they can cite chapter and verse,” recalled Sue Bentch, a Fredericksburg election judge who saw the confrontation that night. “But you know, just as the devil can cite scripture for its own purposes, it seemed to me that it was often cited out of context and misinterpreted.”
“Finally, I called the sheriff’s officer,” said Bentch. The officer barred the activists from the vault. “Poor Terry was coming to fisticuffs.”
Previous elections had been no better. In 2020, a different poll watcher called the police on Herrera and filmed election employees in a dark parking lot. The same year, Herrera received a clutch of obscene, often racist, emails. And in 2019, a group of activists filed suit after Fredericksburg voters overwhelmingly rejected an obscure public-health ballot measure. That election, the activists argued, had been irrevocably tainted by fraud.
Three years of these hostilities were clearly enough for Herrera, who resigned this month.
- Texas will plug 800 abandoned oil and gas wells, funded by $25 million federal infrastructure grant.
Texas will begin plugging about 800 abandoned oil and gas wells this fall, the state’s oil and gas agency said, after receiving an initial $25 million grant from a program included in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan.
It’s a fraction of the approximately 7,400 documented abandoned oil and gas wells that need to be plugged in the state — and industry observers believe the figure to be an undercount. Several more millions of dollars are expected to be disbursed to Texas through the newly created federal program.
Abandoned oil and gas wells leak methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the second-largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide. The wells, if not properly plugged, also can leak toxic water and chemicals in the surrounding areas.
Methane lasts in the atmosphere for less time. Cutting methane emissions is one of the most effective short-term tools to reduce the effects of climate change, scientists say.
The projected cost to plug and clean up the pollution from all 7,400 documented wells is approximately $482 million, according to the commission’s notice of intent to apply for federal funding obtained by The Texas Tribune.
But an estimate from the Department of the Interior shows that Texas likely will be eligible for less than that — about $344 million in federal funds.
The bipartisan infrastructure law passed last year by Congress dedicated $4.7 billion to create a new federal orphan oil and gas well remediation and plugging program. Both Republican U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz voted against the law — as did every Republican House member from Texas.
