- In one Texas county, elections officials shoulder new costs and burdens to appease skeptics.
In Brazos County, suspicions about elections burst into the open last fall, just weeks after a visit from an out-of-state group calling for ballots to be hand-counted.
“Ever since these machines came along, I’ve heard nothing but accusations of fraud,” said another resident. “I am asking you to investigate. Something was wrong in the 2020 election. Voting machines do only what they’re programmed to do.”
- Texas politics leave transgender foster youth isolated — during and after life in state care.
LGBTQ+ foster kids have lost the little protections and affirmations once afforded to them as Texas’ top leaders waged statewide battles that riled public panic about queer people.
Studies show LGBTQ+ kids are more likely to become wards of the state compared with their straight and cisgender counterparts. It’s not difficult to imagine why. Many queer youth enter the system for the same reasons their peers do: abuse, neglect or a parent dealing with addiction. But many LGBTQ+ kids also get rejected by their parents or run away from hostile homes.
Yet Texas’ Child Protective Services doesn’t track the sexual orientation or gender identity of youth in foster care. And as state leaders prioritized legislating everything from transgender kids’ access to certain health care and the places drag queens can perform, they also quietly stalled efforts to better train adults charged with caring for trans foster youth.
“Right now the governor and the Legislature would like nothing better than to just be able to wash their hands of everything LGBTQ-related,” said Sharon Fonvielle-Baughman, who abruptly retired as the Department of Family and Protective Services’ special investigations director last year.
- Texas inmates are being ‘cooked to death’ in extreme heat, complaint alleges.
April signals the beginning of blistering heat for much of Texas. And while the summer heat is uncomfortable for many, it can be deadly for the people incarcerated in Texas’ prison system where temperatures regularly reach triple digits.
With another sweltering summer likely ahead, prison rights advocates on Monday filed a complaint against Texas Department of Criminal Justice executive director Bryan Collier, arguing that the lack of air conditioning in the majority of Texas prisons amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.
The filing came from four nonprofit organizations who are joining a lawsuit originally filed last August by Bernie Tiede, an inmate who suffered a medical crisis after being housed in a Huntsville cell that reached temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. Tiede, a well-known offender whose 1996 murder of a wealthy widow inspired the film “Bernie,” was moved to an air-conditioned cell following a court order but he’s not guaranteed to stay there this year.
Monday’s filing expands the plaintiffs to include every inmate incarcerated in uncooled Texas prisons, which have led to the deaths of dozens of Texas inmates and cost the state millions of dollars as it fights wrongful death and civil rights lawsuits.
- Travis County district attorney faces removal attempt under Texas’ “rogue” prosecutors law.
A Travis County resident is seeking to remove progressive District Attorney José Garza from office using a 2023 Texas law aimed at limiting the discretion of locally elected prosecutors. A state district judge in Comal County on Friday appointed an attorney to represent Texas and pursue the case.
House Bill 17 took effect Sept. 1 and allows courts to remove district attorneys for "official misconduct." That could include refusing to prosecute certain criminal offenses under state law, such as low-level marijuana possession.
When Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill, the Republican leader said the goal of the law was to "hold rogue district attorneys accountable." The GOP priority legislation gained steam after progressive district attorneys, including Garza, said they would not prosecute people seeking abortions banned under Texas law.
However, elected district attorneys have significant prosecutorial discretion, meaning they get to decide which cases to pursue. As KUT previously reported, the law undermines this longtime convention.
Travis County resident Mary Dupuis filed a petition to remove Garza from office on April 8. The filing came just over a month after Garza won the March Democratic primary for district attorney in a landslide.
