Latest news with #Draggieland
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Some of the ‘unhealthiest' cities in the US are in Texas, study shows
(NEXSTAR) — What's the health of your city? Recently, WalletHub compared over 180 of U.S.' most populous cities across 41 metrics, including in areas of health care, food, fitness and green spaces. All cities were then given a score out of 100, with 100 being the most 'healthy,' by the data. Texas A&M can't ban 'Draggieland' drag show, federal judge rules While no Texas cities cracked the top 10 healthiest cities in WalletHub's analysis, Austin ranked 14th nationally, with an overall score of 58.61. Austin received its highest marks in health care (19th overall) and amount of green spaces (21st overall). Unfortunately, no other Texas city appears close to the top — and in fact, multiple Lone Star State areas ranked lowest nationally. Below are Texas' most unhealthy cities, per WalletHub's analysis. Rank City Total score Health care Food Fitness Green spaces 182 Brownsville 24.07 180 182 182 169 178 Laredo 31.21 181 179 180 149 176 Corpus Christi 32.20 174 166 173 159 167 Amarillo 36.62 165 167 156 123 155 Arlington 38.02 105 157 148 146 As you'll see, south Texas cities really took a hit in the scoring, particularly Brownsville, which ranked dead last nationally. Brownsville scored last in the food and fitness categories, which factor things like access to fruit and vegetables and fitness/instruction centers per capita. The city also scored third-to-last in health care, with U.S. Census Bureau data showing about 32% of the city's population under 65 being uninsured. It's also important to note, however, that some of these issues are likely exacerbated by Brownsville's high poverty rate, which was estimated to be 24.9%, based on July 1, 2024 data via the U.S. Census Bureau. That's more than double the national poverty rate (11.1%) and it's been a long-standing problem, as Brownsville was named the poorest city in America over 10 years ago. This is what forecasters mean when they talk about a 100-year flood In Laredo, the poverty rate is also a factor to take into account. Per 2020 Census data, about 20.8% of residents in Laredo were living in poverty. It's a trend seen across many cities with large shares of Latinos, as Axios noted in 2022. The problem extends to highly Latino cities even outside of Texas (analysis included cities in Florida and California). Diana Caba, vice president for community and economic development at the Hispanic Federation, told Axios this is due to a variety of factors, including a historical lack of financial literacy and limited access to financial tools. For more information and the full analysis, visit WalletHub. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Axios
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Paxton tries to revive Texas A&M drag show ban
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed an appeal Tuesday to reinstate Texas A&M's drag show ban, aiming to reverse a federal judge's temporary block. Catch up quick: A federal judge ruled on March 24 that Texas A&M's ban on drag performances violated the First Amendment. The court sided with the student group behind Draggieland, an annual on-campus drag show, calling the university's resolution a viewpoint-based restriction on protected speech. The ruling allowed this year's event to go on as planned last Thursday. State of play: Paxton's appeal seeks to revive the ban, arguing that drag shows promote what he describes as offensive and unlawful behavior. "These filings aim to ensure that our educational institutions are focused solely on promoting academics, not a woke agenda," Paxton said in a statement. The big picture: The case is part of a broader push by the GOP in the US and Texas to restrict transgender rights. The Trump administration's January executive order bars federal funding from institutions that promote "gender ideology." Paxton is using that to justify bans like A&M's. Plus, the Texas Legislature has filed more than 100 anti-trans bills this session, many targeting drag, education, and gender-affirming care. Zoom out: The A&M case is one of three drag-related lawsuits Paxton is defending in federal court. Spectrum WT v. Wendler involves restrictions on drag performances at West Texas A&M University. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, sending it back to a federal appellate court, which has a hearing scheduled for April 29. Woodlands Pride v. Paxton challenges the state's broader drag show ban.
Washington Post
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Texas students sued to keep their drag show on campus. They won.
Sophia Ahmed delivered the news on Monday with a two-word message in all capital letters: 'WE WON.' A court had ruled that the annual, on-campus drag show she and classmates at Texas A&M University had organized could still happen this Thursday. Since May, the students had booked a theater, selected performers and started selling tickets — plans the university system interrupted last month by banning drag events on its campuses, citing President Donald Trump's 'Day 1' executive order on gender ideology. A week later, the Texas A&M student group hosting 'Draggieland' sued, putting the fate of the drag show in the hands of a federal judge. Blocking the show 'because it offends some members of the campus community is precisely what the First Amendment prohibits,' U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal wrote Monday in a ruling that temporarily lifted the university system's ban. After the decision came down, Ahmed, president of the group hosting the show, the Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council, spread the word to fellow organizers. Preparations — and ticket sales — resumed. Doors will open Thursday at the university's Rudder Theatre in College Station. 'It boils down to being an example of queer joy on campus,' Ahmed said. Lawyers from the Texas attorney general's office, which is representing the university system, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. After the ruling, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) wrote on X that drag shows 'promote radical gender ideology. They are not welcome at Texas universities.' In Texas and across the country, conservative lawmakers have targeted drag performances in recent years as part of a larger effort aimed at restricting LGBTQ+ rights. Trump has taken this conservative priority to new heights since assuming office, with attempts to hinder access to gender-affirming care for people under 19 and ban transgender adults from military service. Two years ago, the president of West Texas A&M University — part of the same system as the College Station flagship — canceled a student-organized drag show, writing that drag events 'denigrate and demean women' and comparing them with blackface. But Texas A&M's 'Draggieland' had never faced a threat of this magnitude in its five-year run. For a time, the university had even sponsored the show, whose title combines drag with students' 'Aggie' nickname. When the school ceased its sponsorship before the 2022 show, students took over fundraising, and they continued putting on the show every year at Rudder Theatre. Hundreds have watched local drag performers compete in a themed pageant for the title of Queen or King of 'Draggieland.' For this year's show, planning started smoothly. In the summer, organizers picked showrunners and settled on a theme, 'Slaying the Seven Seas.' In the fall, they held auditions and nailed down finances. Come winter, ticket sales started. Students planned the production in intricate detail, down to purchasing ornaments on clearance after the holidays and painting them an iridescent white to serve as pearls for the show's set design. 'This couldn't have happened had we not started planning so far in advance,' Ahmed said. They paused their planning on Feb. 28 when the Texas A&M Board of Regents adopted a resolution banning drag shows on its campuses. Drag performances, the resolution said, 'often involve unwelcome and objectively offensive conduct' and 'are likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women.' The board cited Trump's executive order prohibiting federal funds from being used to 'promote gender ideology' — and Abbott's support of that order — before stipulating that on-campus drag shows 'may be considered promotion of gender ideology' under the new directive. The resolution noted that students seeking to put on drag shows could access off-campus and private spaces near the system's schools. On March 5, the Queer Empowerment Council sued the board, the system's chancellor and the Texas A&M University president in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. 'What's offensive and what's not offensive is purely subjective, and that's a line that the First Amendment forbids government officials from being able to draw on campus or off,' said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which is representing the students. 'Draggieland' performers frequently — but not always — make clothing choices to 'deliberately contrast with their expected gender presentation,' and are not nude or partially nude, the lawsuit states. It adds that the event is exclusively funded by students, and lists examples of previous and upcoming events at Rudder Theatre. They include a panel by the school's Christian Faculty Network, a speech by Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk, a production of the musical 'Chicago' and a 'Ready to Vote Tour' event featuring former Democratic congressman Beto O'Rourke, according to the lawsuit. While they waited for a ruling, the students considered their options. Could they host the show at a different venue? Would a different date work? They wanted to put on the show no matter what, Ahmed said, but having it on campus felt crucial. 'It's a display of queer resilience,' she said. 'No matter what you try, queer people will be here to stay.' On Monday, Rosenthal's temporary ruling made the backup plans unnecessary. The show would go on as scheduled. On Thursday, when the show begins and the blue and green lights transport attendees to the seas for the night, Ahmed will be there, sitting in the theater with hundreds of other showgoers as in past years. She will be cheering and screaming from the start, she said, because the students had fought for this moment — and they won. Daniel Wu contributed to this report.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Texas A&M's Drag Ban Shows the Threat to Campus Free Speech Is Bipartisan
This week a federal judge stepped in to save a student-sponsored drag show at Texas A&M University. The need for that intervention shows that efforts to control on-campus speech, long decried by conservatives who complained of censorship by intolerant progressives, are a bipartisan phenomenon. Men have been dressing as women in theatrical performances for millennia—a history that includes ancient Greek dramas, 16th century productions of Shakespeare's plays, and popular films such as Hairspray, Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, and White Chicks. But the continuation of that tradition was too much for the Texas A&M Board of Regents, which last month banned "drag shows that involve biological males dressing as women" from "special event venues." That decree put the kibosh to Draggieland, an annual event sponsored by the Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council. The organization had already reserved the Rudder Theatre at the university's College Station campus and sold tickets for the show, which was scheduled for March 27. The theater previously had been available for a wide variety of events, including comedies, musicals, ballet, political speeches, and a fraternity-sponsored beauty pageant. Although the theater had never rejected a reservation request, the regents unanimously decided that Draggieland was beyond the pale because it was "likely to create or contribute to a hostile environment for women," thereby violating federal law and the university's "anti-discrimination policy." The regents also cited President Donald Trump's January 20 executive order aimed at "defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government," which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had welcomed in a January 30 letter instructing state officials that their policies must conform with "the biological reality that there are only two sexes." The regents worried that allowing drag shows "may be considered promotion of gender ideology in violation of the Executive Order and the Governor's directive." These concerns were legally and logically frivolous. It was utterly implausible that an annual event attended only by paying patrons could result in harassment "severe" and "pervasive" enough to create a "hostile environment," and it was quite a stretch to suggest that cross-dressing in the context of a drag show denies the "biological reality" that Abbott is keen to uphold. Even as the regents worried that Draggieland promoted "gender ideology," they argued that it did not actually send any message at all—a point that was crucial to their position that canceling the event did not implicate the First Amendment. And even as they explicitly targeted a particular viewpoint, they denied that they were doing any such thing. U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal had little trouble seeing through the double-talk. In the decision that allowed Draggieland to proceed as planned, she noted that federal courts had almost uniformly recognized drag shows as a form of constitutionally protected expression. Rosenthal, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush in 1992, is hardly a "Radical Left Lunatic"—the label that Trump reflexively applies to judges who disagree with him. Nor is U.S. District Judge David Hittner, a Ronald Reagan appointee who ruled that a Texas law "touted as a 'Drag Ban'" was unconstitutional in a 2023 decision that Rosenthal cited. "In recent years, the commitment to free speech on campuses has been both challenging and challenged," Rosenthal noted. "There have been efforts from all sides of the political spectrum to disrupt or prevent students, faculty, and others from expressing opinions and speech that are deemed, or actually are, offensive or wrong." The victims of those efforts have included conservatives who condemn abortion, promote "a Christian perspective," or chafe at speech restrictions in the guise of fighting "discriminatory harassment"—exactly the tactic that Texas A&M attempted in this case. Instead of picking up the unconstitutional weapons that have been deployed against them, conservatives who want to ensure their own protection should take a page from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represented Draggieland's sponsor in this case, by embracing an even-handed application of free speech principles. © Copyright 2025 by Creators Syndicate Inc. The post Texas A&M's Drag Ban Shows the Threat to Campus Free Speech Is Bipartisan appeared first on
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge blocks Texas A&M's drag show ban
March 25 (UPI) -- A federal judge has blocked the Texas A&M University System from enforcing a drag show ban, handing a victory to an LGBTQ+ student group that has scheduled to hold a drag show on one of its campuses later this month. The lawsuit was filed earlier this month by the Texas A&M Queer Empowerment Council after the university system's Board of Regents voted late February to ban drag shows. According to the university resolution, the board believes drag shows are "inconsistent with the System's mission and core values of its universities" and that they "likely create or contribute to a hostile environment for women ... as these events often involve unwelcome and objectively offensive conduct based on sex." The resolution references President Donald Trump's controversial executive order that makes it federal policy to recognize only male and female genders assigned "at conception," while threatening federal funding for promoting gender ideology. It states that since the system and its universities receive federal funding, the use of its facilities for drag shows "may be considered promotion of gender ideology" in violation of the executive order and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's Jan. 30 letter directing state agencies to adopt its policies. The ban had canceled Texas A&M Queer Empowerment's fifth annual -- and previously scheduled -- Draggieland performance on March 27, despite 168 tickets having already been sold. Their lawsuit, filed March 5 by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, accused the resolution of being a First Amendment violation, and Judge Lee Rosenthal of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas on Monday agreed. "In recent years, the commitment to free speech on campuses has been both challenging and challenged," she said in her opinion. "There have been efforts from all sides of the political spectrum to disrupt or prevent students, faculty and others from expressing opinions and speech that are deemed, or actually are, offensive or wrong. But the law requires the recognition and application of speech rights and guardrails that preserve and protect all our treasured First Amendment rights." In her ruling, the President George H.W. Bush appointee cited previous cases showing that drag shows are considered "expressive conduct" and are protected speech. She also noted that the board's argument that Draggieland is not directly contracts with its assertion that drag performances promote an ideology. "The Board cannot assert both that the performance promotes an ideology and that it is not expressive conduct," she said. "The board disagrees with the messages expressed and finds them offensive, but they are conveyed through speech and expressive conduct under the First Amendment." She rejected the argument that only parts of Draggieland are protected, stating the performance must be treated as a whole like any other form of artistic expression. Concerning the board's stance that its resolution was targeting "demeaning" conduct, Rosenthal ruled that the school's argument is "faulty in logic" and contrary to longstanding First Amendment jurisprudence. "When do performances in which men dress as women cross the line from entertaining to demeaning?" she asked. "The impossibility of objectively answering that question demonstrates why such standards are impermissible as the basis for a restriction on expressive conduct." She also dismissed the claim that drag shows are banned under Trump's executive order and ruled that the boards ban on such performances contradicts its assertion that the resolution is viewpoint-neutral. "Nothing in the Draggieland performance offends the executive order the Board cites. No male performer in the drag show is stating an intent to become a woman. Nor does the Board point to evidence in the record establishing that the president's executive order on 'biological truth' specifically refers or applies to drag shows," she said. "The performers are just that: performers. They are acting. The performance is theater. It is not about individuals seeking to change their biological sex or claim a different biological sex. It is about actors who perform dressed differently than their biological sex." The Queer Empowerment Council said in a statement that they were "overjoyed" with the court's decision. "This is another display of the resilience of queer joy, as that is an unstoppable force despite those that wish to see it destroyed," it said in a statement. "While this fight isn't over, we are going to appreciate the joy we get to bring by putting on the best show that we can do."
