Latest news with #Geren
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Texas House votes to abolish Texas Lottery Commission; save Texas lottery
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Sunset review couldn't have come at a worse time for the Texas Lottery Commission (TLC). While TLC was listed by USA Today as one of the best places to work in 2025, in September it's likely no one will be working there. Sunset review is a process most state departments go through every 12 years. During a review, the legislature has to actively renew the department or they cease to exist. However in this case, the legislature is proactively killing the TLC. Saturday night, the Texas House passed an amended version of Senate Bill 3070, which abolishes the TLC and hands over control of the Texas Lottery and Charitable Bingo to the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR). The decision comes amidst a host of scandals for the commission, resulting in investigations from both the Texas Rangers and the Attorney General's Office. While the Senate passed SB 3070 unanimously, House sponsor Charlie Geren, R-Lake Worth, re-wrote the bill based on conversations with TDLR. Each bill calls for the incoming Texas Lottery division of TDLR to undergo a sunset review to see how they're functioning under the new department. However, the Senate's version called for a full review in 2027, while the House calls for a review in 2029. Additionally, the scope of the House's proposed review is more narrowly-tailored to determine if TDLR is the best home for the lottery, and to determine if the lottery is following the guidelines set out by the legislature. Both versions call for lottery mobile applications to end, however the Texas House removed a provision from the Senate's version which required TDLR to post the minutes and guest list for all formal or informal meetings regarding contracting, procurement or policymaking of the lottery. The Senate added this language after a lawsuit alleged former TLC officials worked with courier services to brainstorm the best ways to implement lottery mobile applications. Geren's version also stripped a provision banning automatic renewals of contracts the TLC entered in before the transfer becomes official on Sept. 1. Most interestingly, the Texas House removed a provision allowing the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Speaker of the House or the Attorney General from acting as lottery investigators. The language was added to the Senate version after the retailer Winners Corner — affiliated with the mobile app Jackpocket — refused to let Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick inspect how many lottery terminals they had in their backroom. On Monday, the House will likely hear SB 3070 for a third reading. Should it pass there, it will be sent back to the Texas Senate where they can either agree to the changes or determine which disputed provisions should remain in the final bill. Either way, the elements both sides agree on will likely be sent to Gov. Greg Abbott to sign. If he signs, the lottery will have this summer to transition to TDLR before the TLC is abolished on Sept. 1. Because the TLC is up for sunset anyway, a Abbott veto would still mean the TLC is abolished on Sept. 1, but the Texas Lottery would go with it. 'Ensuring the integrity, security, honesty and fairness of the agency and its games is the top priority for the Texas Lottery Commission (TLC). The TLC respects the legislative process, serves as a resource to the Legislature, and will follow the direction of the Legislature,' a representative for the TLC said in a statement. 'The TLC is prepared to fully support the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation with ensuring that a smooth, seamless and successful transition occurs for both the administration of the lottery and the regulation of charitable bingo.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Texas bill clarifying when doctors can perform life-saving abortions wins early House vote
(The Texas Tribune) — The House voted 129-6 on Wednesday to preliminarily approve a bill to clarify Texas' near-total abortion ban, after it passed the Senate unanimously last month. Despite wide bipartisan support for the bill, some conservative lawmakers raised concerns about whether this would create a loophole allowing doctors to 'rubber stamp' otherwise prohibited abortions. Bill sponsor Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican from Fort Worth, stressed that this was not a 'choice bill,' but rather an attempt to ensure the existing limits of the law are 'clear, consistent, fair and understandable.' 'We do not want women to die from medical emergencies during their pregnancy,' Geren said. 'We don't want women's lives to be destroyed because their bodies have been seriously impaired.' Texas banned all abortions three years ago, with a narrow exception that allows doctors to terminate a pregnancy only to save a pregnant patient's life. Immediately, doctors and legal experts warned that this exception was too narrow and vaguely written, and the penalties too severe, to ensure that women could get life-saving care. That has proven true in many cases. Dozens of women have come forward with stories of medically necessary abortions delayed or denied, and at least three women have died as a result of these laws. Faced with these stories, Republican lawmakers have conceded that the language of the law might need some clearing up. Senate Bill 31, also called the Life of the Mother Act, does not expand the exceptions or restore abortion access. It instead aims to clarify when a doctor can terminate a pregnancy under the existing exceptions by aligning language among the state's abortion laws, codifying court rulings and requiring education for doctors and lawyers on the nuances of the law. The bill was tightly negotiated among lobbyists for doctors and hospitals, anti-abortion groups and Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, who authored the bill, and Geren. 'These groups don't always see eye to eye,' Geren said. 'But in this case, they worked together to ensure pregnant women with pregnancy complications get appropriate and timely care.' In the Senate, Republicans threw their support behind the bill, while Democrats pushed back on its narrowness, noting that Texas law still does not allow abortions in cases of rape, incest or lethal fetal anomalies. 'The folks who are working on this fix are, from my perspective, the folks who have created the problem,' said Houston Sen. Molly Cook. 'Over the past four years, we've watched women suffer and die, and this bill is the confirmation that we all agree that something is broken in Texas.' In the House, however, the bill faced headwinds from the right, as conservative Republicans rallied to the idea that this bill would allow doctors to resume elective abortions. Rep. Brent Money, a Greenville Republican, said he believed the laws were clear as written but there had been 'malicious interpretations' by pro-abortion doctors. 'People that want to promote abortion have tried to make it murky what our current law is,' Money said. 'And so my question is to you, is this law written to ensure that malicious actors won't be able to find loopholes to allow abortions that would not be allowed under our current law?' Geren touted his own perfect record of voting for every anti-abortion measure that's come before the House in his long career, and assured Money and his fellow conservatives that this was not an end-run around the laws. 'We are in no way promoting abortion on this,' Geren said, adding later that if a doctor were to abuse this clarification, they could face 99 years in prison and 'they would deserve it.' Many anti-abortion Republican women rallied to Geren's side, including Rep. Shelby Slawson, a Stephenville Republican who carried the bill in 2021 that led to Texas banning nearly all abortions. She framed this bill as just codifying the Legislature's original intent to protect the live's of pregnant women. They took the mic to offer up examples of times doctors should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy – in cases of cancer diagnoses, kidney failure, premature membrane rupture, ectopic pregnancies. But still, some Republicans were not appeased. Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Deer Park lawyer who has been involved in some of the state's most contentious abortion litigation, asked Geren if 'more or less babies will die' as a result of this bill. Geren conceded that by affirming that doctors can perform abortions to save a woman's life, it was possible more babies would die, although he noted that many women were traveling out-of-state to get the same medical care they were denied in Texas. Rep. Brian Harrison, a Midlothian Republican, said he was 'alarmed' to hear Geren's comments, and said it was the 'height of irresponsibility to tinker with these pro-life protections that have already saved countless lives.' Some doctors groups, including the Texas chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have criticized the bill for not going far enough to protect doctors and the patients they treat. Others say these changes will be sufficient to free doctors to perform medically necessary abortions without fear of lengthy prison sentences and massive fines. 'At the end of the day, our hope is that political differences can be set aside, because at the heart of this is a pregnant mother whose health and safety are on the line,' Texas Hospital Association president John Hawkins said in a statement. 'Hospitals and doctors need to be able to act on the medical facts and merits in front of them, without fear of prosecution. We sincerely believe this will have an immediate and positive impact, helping us provide life-saving care to our patients.' Despite the back-and-forth between Republican factions over the bill, it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, with just six Republicans, including Harrison, voting no. Ten Republicans, including Cain and Money, declined to vote on the measure. The House also preliminarily approved Senate Bill 33 on Wednesday, which prohibits a city or county from using taxpayer dollars to pay for abortion-related expenses. The bill is aimed at Austin and San Antonio, where city officials have allocated budget dollars to support abortion funds that help pay for people to travel to abortion clinics out-of-state. Despite efforts from Democrats to kill the bill on procedural grounds, it passed 89-57. Disclosure: Texas Hospital Association has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Texas House overwhelmingly passes bill to clarify medical exception to state abortion ban
After months of behind-the-scenes negotiations and years of criticism over unclear medical exceptions, the Texas House on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill clarifying the state's near-total abortion bans. Senate Bill 31 standardizes the medical exception in the state's three separate abortion bans, including one from 1857, and requires doctors to receive training on what is permissible under the law. It also clarifies that doctors may treat a life-threatening condition before a patient faces imminent death or harm, codifying the Texas Supreme Court's 2024 ruling in a lawsuit brought by 20 Texas women and two OB-GYNs. The proposal does not expand or change which Texans qualify for a legal abortion. Current law bans the procedure from fertilization, with no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal anomalies. Addressing his colleagues, Republican state Rep. Charlie Geren said SB 31 will ensure doctors know when they can intervene in near-death situations. "We know women have died after care was delayed or denied,' said Geren, who authored SB 31's House companion. "We know women have left Texas for lifesaving care. We know women have been horribly injured because doctors have refused to provide abortions that could save their bodies. Doctors and hospitals need the clarity that SB 31 can provide." Since September 2021, when the Legislature passed Senate Bill 8, at least three women have died after doctors denied abortion care during medical crises and the rate of sepsis nearly doubled among pregnant Texans, according to ProPublica. Around three abortions per month have taken place under the life-of-the-mother exception, or 135 in total, according to data from the state Health and Human Services Commission. Doctors also testified in regulatory hearings that they were afraid they would face lawsuits or criminal prosecution for intervening to save a woman's life. The preliminary 129-6 House vote moves SB 31 one crucial step forward to reaching the governor's desk after it passed unanimously in the state Senate. Ten House members abstained. The bill will go to a final vote Thursday and would take effect immediately once signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Several of the chamber's hardline Republicans questioned Geren about whether the bill would allow doctors to terminate pregnancies unnecessarily, with Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, asking whether more babies would die as a result of the bill. Rep. Tom Oliverson, an anesthesiologist and conservative Republican from Cypress, responded to those concerns by saying that when a previable pregnancy threatens a mother's life, the baby will die regardless. "The question is whether the mother survives the pregnancy," Oliverson said on the House floor. "We're not talking about circumstances where the baby could be delivered and could survive." SB 31's initial language drew significant pushback from abortion rights activists, who said it could bolster the state's argument that an abortion ban originating in 1857 is enforceable. In response, the bill's author, Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, changed the proposal to clarify it neither rejects nor affirms the enforceability of the pre-Roe law. The bill now also states that pregnant Texans cannot be prosecuted for receiving an abortion. SB 31 will tweak Hughes' Senate Bill 8, the 2021 law that authorizes private citizens to sue people who terminate a pregnancy after around six weeks. It also changes some language in House Bill 1280, a 2021 law that set out criminal penalties of up to 99 years in prison, loss of a medical license and significant fines for physicians found to have illegally terminated a pregnancy. According to Geren, SB 31 will address a mismatch between the intent and the effect of those abortion bans. "This bill clarifies the legislative intent that everyone thought we had when we passed the law several years ago," he said. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Bill to 'clarify' Texas abortion ban set to reach Gov. Greg Abbott
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Educators hope 'abysmal' national literacy rates will be addressed now that DEI, gender ideology out the door
FIRST ON FOX: A Texas-driven campaign to tackle children's "abysmal" literacy rates over recent decades is hoping to go national, as President Donald Trump rolls back DEI initiatives and curbs progressive gender ideology that has taken center stage in recent years. "Literacy has taken a backseat, and it's because people don't know our kids can't read," said Pete Geren, former secretary of the Army and a former Democratic congressman from Texas. "I make a lot of public presentations. I meet with elected officials, state reps, who you know it's really a state issue. They have no awareness of this." At Grade Level, a Texas-based organization behind the "Have Your Child Read to You" campaign, is partnering with Geren – a former state lawmaker from the '90s and now president and CEO of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation – who is a well-known advocate for public education. Red States Get In Line With Trump's Dei Ban In Schools As Compliance Deadline Nears "The federal government has told us over and over and over that most of our kids cannot read proficiently, and it has never led to a literacy movement in this country," Geren said. Geren and At Grade Level are urging parents to do a simple task: ask their children to read out loud to them to see if they are learning proficiently in school. Read On The Fox News App Only 43% of more than 170,000 students are reading at proficient grade level, according to state test scores in Fort Worth, and close to 100% of parents believe their children can read at grade level. The numbers on a national scale show a similar trend. Trump Admin Warns States To Comply With Housing Prisoners By Their Biological Sex Or Face Funding Cutoff "It's our goal to build awareness," Geren said. "The missing link in the political movement is the parents… if they know, everything will change. Parents will do anything for their kids, and they'll fix this problem at home and at the governmental level." Reading proficiency among eighth graders dropped to 67%, the lowest in 32 years, while only 60% of fourth graders met basic reading standards, according to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Only 67% of eighth-graders met or exceeded basic reading skills on the 2024 NAEP exam, down 2 percentage points from 1992 when the testing began. The NAEP, often referred to as the Nation's Report Card, is the gold standard for measuring student academic performance. And poor literacy rates are closely tied to crime, according to At Grade Level, reporting that approximately 80% of Texas prison inmates are functionally illiterate. "We've got the district attorney, we've got the county judge, and so many leaders coming out because of the connection to crime," Geren said. Department Of Education Doled Out Over $200M To Universities To Inject Dei Into Counseling Courses: Report In February, Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes said at a press conference that the statistics "paint a stark, tragic picture of our present situation, but that doesn't have to be our future." "Many of the people incarcerated right now are there, in part, because of that lack of proper literacy levels that they did not receive when they were young," Noakes said. Trump signed executive orders to eliminate DEI programs and gender ideology instruction in K-12 schools in January. Two months later, he moved to significantly downsize the Department of Education to shift more control over education back to the states. While downsizing the department, Trump criticized the billions of dollars funneled into the public education system while students' test scores in core subjects have continued to plummet. "We want great education. So they rank 40 countries in education, we're ranked dead last, but the good news is we're number one in one category. You know what that is? Cost per pupil," Trump told Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy at a press conference in February. "We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world." U.S. federal, state and local governments collectively spend about $857.2 billion annually on K-12 public education. Despite a record $190 billion in federal aid since the pandemic, students' academic performance has seen little improvement. An analysis by The New York Times in March found that, since the pandemic, students have fallen behind by more than half a year in math and also struggled in reading and article source: Educators hope 'abysmal' national literacy rates will be addressed now that DEI, gender ideology out the door
Fox News
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Educators hope 'abysmal' national literacy rates will be addressed now that DEI, gender ideology out the door
FIRST ON FOX: A Texas-driven campaign to tackle children's "abysmal" literacy rates over recent decades is hoping to go national, as President Donald Trump rolls back DEI initiatives and curbs progressive gender ideology that has taken center stage in recent years. "Literacy has taken a backseat, and it's because people don't know our kids can't read," said Pete Geren, former secretary of the Army and a former Democratic congressman from Texas. "I make a lot of public presentations. I meet with elected officials, state reps, who you know it's really a state issue. They have no awareness of this." At Grade Level, a Texas-based organization behind the "Have Your Child Read to You" campaign, is partnering with Geren – a former state lawmaker from the '90s and now president and CEO of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation – who is a well-known advocate for public education. "The federal government has told us over and over and over that most of our kids cannot read proficiently, and it has never led to a literacy movement in this country," Geren said. Geren and At Grade Level are urging parents to do a simple task: ask their children to read out loud to them to see if they are learning proficiently in school. Only 43% of more than 170,000 students are reading at proficient grade level, according to state test scores in Fort Worth, and close to 100% of parents believe their children can read at grade level. The numbers on a national scale show a similar trend. "It's our goal to build awareness," Geren said. "The missing link in the political movement is the parents… if they know, everything will change. Parents will do anything for their kids, and they'll fix this problem at home and at the governmental level." Reading proficiency among eighth graders dropped to 67%, the lowest in 32 years, while only 60% of fourth graders met basic reading standards, according to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Only 67% of eighth-graders met or exceeded basic reading skills on the 2024 NAEP exam, down 2 percentage points from 1992 when the testing began. The NAEP, often referred to as the Nation's Report Card, is the gold standard for measuring student academic performance. And poor literacy rates are closely tied to crime, according to At Grade Level, reporting that approximately 80% of Texas prison inmates are functionally illiterate. "We've got the district attorney, we've got the county judge, and so many leaders coming out because of the connection to crime," Geren said. In February, Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes said at a press conference that the statistics "paint a stark, tragic picture of our present situation, but that doesn't have to be our future." "Many of the people incarcerated right now are there, in part, because of that lack of proper literacy levels that they did not receive when they were young," Noakes said. Trump signed executive orders to eliminate DEI programs and gender ideology instruction in K-12 schools in January. Two months later, he moved to significantly downsize the Department of Education to shift more control over education back to the states. While downsizing the department, Trump criticized the billions of dollars funneled into the public education system while students' test scores in core subjects have continued to plummet. "We want great education. So they rank 40 countries in education, we're ranked dead last, but the good news is we're number one in one category. You know what that is? Cost per pupil," Trump told Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy at a press conference in February. "We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world." U.S. federal, state and local governments collectively spend about $857.2 billion annually on K-12 public education. Despite a record $190 billion in federal aid since the pandemic, students' academic performance has seen little improvement. An analysis by The New York Times in March found that, since the pandemic, students have fallen behind by more than half a year in math and also struggled in reading and science.
