TribCast: Did lawmakers improve Texas' infrastructure?
Watch the video above, or subscribe to the TribCast on iTunes, Spotify, or RSS. New episodes every Tuesday.
Today's episode of the TribCast is sponsored by the City of Corpus Christi, Texas REALTORS and Water Grows.
First round of TribFest speakers announced! Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd; U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio; Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker; U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California; and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas are taking the stage Nov. 13–15 in Austin. Get your tickets today!
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Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
Texas attorney general seeks jail for O'Rourke as senate passes Republican-drawn map
The Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, has asked a local judge to consider jailing Beto O'Rourke, saying the former congressman was openly defying a judicial order blocking him and his political group from fundraising and paying the costs of Democrats who left the state to stop Republicans from passing a new congressional map. Tarrant county district judge Megan Fahey granted a request from Paxton last week halting O'Rourke and a group aligned with him, Powered by People, from fundraising. The order bars the group from using funds to pay the costs of Texas lawmakers during the special session or paying the $500 daily fines the lawmakers face for each time they are absent. In his Tuesday, filing, Paxton said O'Rourke had continued to fundraise after Fahey's ruling, pointing to a post on X soliciting donations on ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform, and requests to donate during a rally in Fort Worth last week. Paxton requested O'Rourke be fined $500 for each instance in which he defied the court's order and 'be confined to jail unless and until he demonstrates a willingness to abide by the court's orders pending the outcome of this lawsuit'. Powered by People did not immediately return a request for comment. In a filing in response to Paxton's, O'Rourke's lawyers said Paxton was 'knowingly taking a statement entirely out of context to intentionally misrepresent the statement to this Court' and said they would seek sanctions against him, according to the Texas Tribune. The court's order, they said, barred the group from fundraising for non-political purposes, not from fundraising altogether. 'He's lying about me to try to silence us,' O'Rourke said in a post on X on Tuesday. At the urging of Donald Trump, Republicans are seeking to pass a new map that would give them five additional seats in Congress. O'Rourke's group has been one of the main funders for Texas Democrats as they have left the state for weeks to deny Republicans in the state legislature a quorum to conduct business. The Texas senate passed the new congressional map on Tuesday, but it will not earn full approval from the legislature because of the quorum-break. Lawmakers are set to adjourn on Friday and Texas's governor, Greg Abbott, has said he will immediately convene a new special session. Many of the lawmakers are currently in Illinois, and Powered by People has been a leading funder in covering expenses, according to the Texas Tribune. Paxton and Abbott have been trying to ratchet up the pressure on them to return to Texas. Paxton has also launched an investigation into Powered by People. O'Rourke filed his own lawsuit against Paxton in El Paso seeking to halt that investigation.
15 hours ago
Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown makes it official. He'll vie to unseat Trump-backed Sen. Jon Husted
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown officially launched his campaign Monday to return to the U.S. Senate next year, brushing aside his bitter loss to Republican Bernie Moreno last fall and expressing confidence his pro-working class message can continue to resonate with the state's voters. The state's best-known Democrat, Brown is seeking the seat held by Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, a former Ohio lieutenant governor, state senator and secretary of state who's already landed President Donald Trump's endorsement. Husted was appointed to the seat in January to succeed JD Vance when he was elected vice president. Next year's election is for the final two years of the six-year term. In an Associated Press interview, Brown said he was not planning a political return until he watched with his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, as the Senate passed Trump's big tax breaks and spending cuts bill last month. He said the bill perpetuates a 'rigged system' he's been fighting against throughout his career, by offering tax breaks to the wealthy while cutting programs for lower-income Americans, such as Medicaid. 'We just couldn't stay on the sideline,' Brown said. 'And I know I can fight back. Nobody in the Senate is speaking out for Ohio workers, nobody. And that's my job to do. It's what I've done my whole life, and it's what I'm going to continue to do.' Brown, 72, is viewed as one of Democrats' most formidable Senate candidates in next year's midterms, as they try to take control of the chamber in the face of a daunting map. He and former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina are two well-known names the party's recruited to run in high-profile races, while Republicans have struggled to line up candidates in some key battlegrounds. That includes Georgia, where Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff is Republicans' top target of the cycle. Brown said he was encouraged by the many everyday Ohioans who stopped him on the street or at a coffee shop to ask him to return to politics. Among dozens of others he spoke to as he weighed whether Senate or governor was the best fit was Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who's leading the uphill fight to win control of the chamber. Some Ohio labor leaders told the AP they'd have preferred if Brown had chosen governor. They're concerned about the impacts on the movement if biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — the well-funded, Trump- and state party-endorsed Republican front-runner — wins the open seat next year. Brown, who launched a pro-worker nonprofit under his 'Dignity of Work' slogan in March, acknowledged 'a little bit of disappointment' with his choice of office among some. But he said he anticipates 'close to 100% support' from union leadership now that he's launched his campaign. 'What labor will tell me is they don't have any strong voice for labor in the United States Senate — for union and non-union labor alike,' he said. 'And I was that, and I will be that.' He said he isn't ready to make an endorsement in the governor's race, in which Dr. Amy Acton, a former state health director who helped lead the state through the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, is running as a Democrat. After Brown's decision to run for the Senate became public last week, Husted's campaign said Brown will be 'starting in the biggest hole of his political career.' 'Brown's slogans will ring hollow as his coalition walks away, tired of the radical policies he's forced to support to appease his coastal bosses in California and New York,' Husted spokesperson Tyson Shepard said in a statement. Brown volleys back: 'My career has been about workers. His career has been about special interests.' He cites unresolved ties Husted, 57, has to the energy company at the heart of a $60 million bribery scheme that has enveloped the state over the past five years and put a former House speaker behind bars for 20 years. Husted has never been charged with any civil or criminal wrongdoing. In an Aug. 12 strategy memo, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign said Brown, Democrats and the political press are underestimating how firmly red Ohio — once a reliable political bellwether — has turned after 10 years of Trump. The memo said Brown was defeated last cycle by a political newcomer and will face 'an even steeper climb against a well-known incumbent' like Husted, who's spent the past 20 years in state politics and posted $2.9 million in fundraising last quarter. Last year's Brown-Moreno match-up was the most expensive Senate race in U.S. history.
New York Post
a day ago
- New York Post
Even liberal Maureen Dowd of The Times admits DC is crime-ridden
Proving the old saw that a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, one of The New York Time's marquee columnists has agreed — grudgingly, stubbornly, kicking and screaming — that President Donald Trump is right: There's too much crime in the nation's capital. And, just possibly, Washington, DC, currently under Democratic control, could benefit from Trump calling in the National Guard and other feds to help restore law and order. 'It's ridiculous to drag F.B.I. agents from their desks to be cops on the beat. And the tableau of National Guard troops — even unarmed — raises the specter of martial law being normalized and weaponized,' Pulitzer Prize-winning DC-based scribe Maureen Dowd wrote over the weekend. Then, hold your horses, La Dowd suddenly hit the brakes, skidded, and did a complete 180. 'It is also true that many D.C. residents are secretly glad to see more uniforms. No matter what statistics say, they don't feel safe.' This about-face was brought on by her sister's close encounter with slovenly car thieves. As Dowd tells it, she was having dinner with her sibling Peggy in the upscale Georgetown neighborhood recently when the metaphorical mugging zapped the liberal right out of her: Peg's beloved Buick vanished from its parking spot by Maureen's house. 'Two polite officers who responded to our call said they could do little, amid a rash of brazen car thefts by teenagers,' Dowd wrote. 'One officer said that, even if they saw the perp driving in her car, they could not chase him, because of laws passed by the D.C. Council.' Dowd initially seemed to dismiss Trump's hard-core stance on juvenile crime as over-the-top payback against two 15-year-olds charged with assaulting and attempting to carjack a former Department of Government Efficiency employee. That is, until Peggy's Buick showed up in a park in nearby Maryland the morning after it was snatched — still running, nearly out of gas, with a $215 tow charge she was required to pay, Dowd griped. There was a half-eaten pizza, grape soda cans, fast-food wrappers, a used condom and a pair of debit cards inside, Dowd reported. But cops said they could do nothing to nail the fiends. Insult to injury, Peggy soon received more than $1,800-worth of speed-camera tickets for driving 70 miles an hour in a 25 mph zone, and had to prove the car was stolen in order to get the summonses tossed. Dowd's co-workers haven't gotten the message. Last week, shortly after the president declared war on DC crime, The Times worked double-time to minimize the threat. One article refuted Trump's statement that the 2023 murder rate was the highest 'probably ever.' False! crowed the paper. The homicide rate of about 40.4 deaths per 100,000 people was the highest in 26 years, not ever. And in 2024, that number dipped to some 26.6 corpses per 100,000 Washingtonians But Dowd is not favorably impressed. 'While the district's homicide rate has fallen,' she writes, 'it's almost as high as New York's at its most dangerous, in 1990.' Dowd, whose father was a cop, confesses she packs pepper spray these days to protect her from troublemakers when walking around town, a habit she adopted years ago when her mother drove her to her college dorm with a butcher knife on the seat between them. Her mom also gave her a Chinese letter opener with written instructions on how to find the jugular of an assailant. Over the weekend, Times reporters visited DC neighborhoods populated primarily with people of color to find out how residents felt about attempts to wipe out crime. Perhaps surprisingly to the Times, not everyone in these communities opposes being safer. Though every attempt was made to find people who said they did not trust the president, others admitted liking to continue breathing. Dowd summed things up, writing, 'But progressives should not fall into Trump's trap and play down crime, once more getting on the wrong side of an inflammatory issue. As with inflation, they should remember that personal experiences can count more than sanguine statistics. 'Even if Trump is being diabolical, Democrats should not pretend everything is fine here. Because it's not.' Finally — all the news that's fit to print.
