From our magazine: GOP legislators repeatedly insisted that “Texas Education Freedom Accounts” would be open to any and all types of private schools—of all creeds and persuasions.
In predictable fashion, they haven't quite lived up to that promise. https://www.texasobserver.org/school-vouchers-discrimination-brouhaha-abbott/
#vouchers #education #racism #politics #USpol #news #Texas #TXlege
Featured story: "The playbook is the same, scapegoating one community and fear-mongering to be able to get the votes that you need ... And then last summer, you know, the rhetoric translated into direct real world threats against me and my family." https://www.texasobserver.org/the-interview-salman-bhojani/
There is no reasoning with white supremacy.
>Many testifying at Frisco City Council meetings or posting about the city on social media go far beyond asking for immigration reform. There’s been a surge in anti-Indian racism on social media since Trump returned to the White House, framing legal immigrants as “job stealers” and “invaders.” A clip of Boy Scouts leading the Pledge of Allegiance before a Frisco City Council meeting went viral, attracting thousands of reposts, many with hateful language, because the boys were Indian.
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>“If you go after Boy Scouts, 10-year-old kids doing literally the most American thing ever, how can you also say the issue is assimilation?” Thakur asked. “This parsing, this segmenting of populations by identity politics, is the worst kind of politics there is.”
State Representative Salman Bhojani's recipe for fixing #Texas elections:
1. Jungle primaries
2. Independently drawn voting districts
3. Ranked choice voting https://www.texasobserver.org/the-interview-salman-bhojani/
"Our job as state representatives is to fully fund our public schools. We haven’t done that, so let’s not talk about adding some more. So I’m still against the private school voucher program, but once you open that floodgate, you have to treat everybody equally." https://www.texasobserver.org/the-interview-salman-bhojani/
#education #vouchers #politics #USpol #news #schools #TXlege #Texas #racism
From Michelle Pitcher: Thanks to #Texas' Court of Criminal Appeals, no one on death row has been granted a new trial under a law meant to protect them from junk science-based convictions.
Now, the debate goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-top-criminal-court-junk-science-law-supreme-court/
If the U.S. Supreme Court renders a decision in favor of Charles Flores and others, it would likely force the Court of Criminal Appeals to relax its extremely strict handling of appeals based on shoddy and outdated science.
"What Abbott is doing is McCarthyism with a #Texas accent. So if you think about McCarthy, he didn’t need to prove that someone was a communist. The accusation itself became the evidence. Now from there, you can destroy careers, you can revoke passports, you can blacklist entire organizations." https://www.texasobserver.org/the-interview-salman-bhojani/
"I was doxxed by extremists, my home was doxxed, my children’s social media accounts were doxxed and exposed online, there were unmarked cars following them, and I’m not even here—I’m in Chicago, breaking quorum." https://www.texasobserver.org/the-interview-salman-bhojani/
Previously: Applications for #vouchers had been submitted for about 275,000 students as of late March. But just 25% percent were for students currently enrolled in public schools. (That amounts to about 1% of the state’s 5.5 million public school students.) https://www.texasobserver.org/school-vouchers-discrimination-brouhaha-abbott/
#education #racism #religion #politics #USpol #Texas #news #TXlege
Out today: “Counties use tax breaks to try to get a commitment from the developer that they’ll use a closed-loop cooling system instead of evaporative cooling. I’m glad counties are using the tools they have, but we only have carrots. We only have incentives.” https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-legislature-data-center-boom-water/
Texas Observer
Preston Maness ☭
