Latest news with #Menéndez
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas Senate bill looks to answer how much help school districts need to install seatbelts on buses
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — A bill in the Texas Senate will require school districts to have seatbelts on every single school bus in their fleet, no matter what year the bus was purchased. Districts that cannot afford to meet full compliance will be required to publicly report it to the Texas Education Agency so the state can better understand how it can financially help. Senate Bill 546, authored by State Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, has gone through some changes. Originally, the bill allowed for poorer school districts to install two-point seatbelts, or lap belts, as an alternative to three-point belts. However, a committee substitute of the bill filed Wednesday morning removes that alternative, because lap belts are not viewed as a safer option. The National Association for Pupil Transportation, an organization that supports school transportation professionals, released a statement this month saying it opposes the use of two-point belts on school buses and instead recommends three-point lap-and-shoulder belts for any school district deciding to install seatbelts on its fleet. The bill would allow a four-year compliance window for school districts. Menéndez spoke about the bill and its requirement for districts to publicly report a plan of action during the Senate Committee on Transportation meeting Wednesday morning. 'The school districts must submit a plan of action for compliance with them with a timeline for implementation. This plan of action should include the number of busses that will or will not be in compliance, and what's the cost to purchase the three-point seat belts. Finally, the plan of action will need to be presented in an open meeting with the school board and submitted to TEA … and then they will, the TEA will share each district's report to the legislature,' Menéndez explained. Menéndez said this will give state lawmakers a better understanding of where help is needed most, as some school districts have already installed seatbelts on their fleet. 'So we need to identify those school districts that need the actual help. Maybe we could put a grant program together after we know the size of the problem. If we don't know the problem, I don't know how we fix it,' Menéndez explained. The impetus of Menéndez's bill was the deadly bus crash in March 2024. A Hays CISD school bus driving back from a trip to the zoo collided with a concrete truck. Five-year-old Ulises Rodriguez Montoya and 33-year-old Ryan Wallace died in the crash. In total, 53 people were injured. The school bus carrying the group of students did not have seatbelts. A 2017 law passed in Texas required all school buses purchased after 2017 to be equipped with seatbelts, but older models would not be held to that same requirement. In the aftermath of the crash, Hays CISD officials approved a $4.7 million purchase of 30 new school buses with seatbelts and also approved $397,000 to retrofit seatbelts on 13 older school buses. The bill was left pending in the Transportation Committee Wednesday morning. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas Senate passes bills to fight AI-generated sexual images of children, non-consenting adults
AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Texas Legislature is working on several bills that could introduce more protections against AI-generated explicit images used for harassment and the production of child sexual assault materials (CSAM). February: Bill to protect victims of deepfake 'revenge' porn passes US Senate The Texas Senate passed three such bills by unanimous votes on Wednesday. SB 20 and SB 1621 both update the state's statues against the possession of CSAM to include AI-generated content. SB 442 would update state law to consider AI-generated content as potentially unlawful production or distribution of sexually explicit video, if made without the consent of the person it depicts. NewsNation: What state laws protect kids against AI-generated deepfakes? Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, asked prior to the vote on SB 20 if it could take effect sooner than Sept. 1. 'There are not enough negative adjectives out there to describe people that would use a computer software animation or something to depict the child in some form of pornography or obscene visual material,' Menéndez said. 'I would like to see what we could do to get any material or any people that are possessing or creating this material to understand that they're going to be dealt with severely through the criminal justice system, and that we're not going to tolerate this.' A Texas law can only take immediate effect if more than two-thirds of both chambers vote in favor of the bill's final version. Sen. Tan Parker, R-Dallas, spoke about SB 20 prior to the vote. He is one of the bill's authors. 'The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has created powerful tools that, while being beneficial in many areas, are being exploited to produce AI-generated and virtual [CSAM],' Parker said, 'Unlike traditional CSAM, which is already illegal, AI-generated images, videos and deep fakes depicting child exploitation exist in a legal gray area, allowing offenders to create and share disturbing content with impunity. This loophole must be closed immediately.' In addition to those two bills, the Texas House of Representatives is working on its own legislation to protect against AI misuse. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence committee heard testimony about House Bills 421 and 581. Both bills were authored by Rep. Mary González, D-El Paso, who chairs the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus. HB 421 would allow for victims of AI-generated explicit images to sue the creators of such images. If the lawsuit succeeds, the plaintiff could be rewarded exemplary damages. Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, also authored the bill. HB 581 also creates grounds for lawsuits; this time, against a commercial entity who creates an AI program that can create sexual material harmful to minors, which covers explicit images of adults. Businesses providing explicit AI-generation tools would need to comply with Texas' age verification law and have consent from the person whose likeness is used in the produced image. González told the committee that the House has 'a responsibility to do something' to combat the use of AI-generated CSAM. She said that her solutions, aimed at companies that create AI tools for explicit image creation, would likely inconvenience some in the tech sector. 'Here's what's happening — a kid, a 12-year-old girl, her picture is taken, and another student uses her picture and creates sexually explicit content. The kid goes to school, it's traumatic,' González said. 'If it stops a 12-year-old girl from being bullied because [someone] had created sexual content about her, then yeah, let's inconvenience some people, because the long term effects are completely harmful and traumatic.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Erik Menéndez claims he and Lyle were assaulted, traumatized in prison
Erik Menéndez is opening up about the "trauma" and "dangerous environment" of prison. Menéndez and his brother, Lyle, have been in prison for three decades after being found guilty of murdering their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion. According to a new interview, the brothers found prison to be a dark and dangerous place. Sign up for the to keep up with what's new in LGBTQ+ culture and entertainment — delivered three times a week straight (well…) to your inbox! In a phone interview with the TMZ podcast 2 Angry Men podcast (which is co-hosted by the brothers' lawyer Mark Geragos), Menéndez opened up about some of the alleged hardships he and his brother have faced while incarcerated. "Prison was hard for me. I faced a lot of bullying and trauma," Menéndez said. "It was a dangerous environment." "I was picked on, bullied violently, and it was traumatic and it was continual," he continued. "Those are things that a lot of inmates in prison go through when they're not part of a gang structure and they come in and they're basically lone wolves, they just have to be by themselves." Prison can be hard, and there's a lot of suffering in person," Menéndez said. "I'm not gonna fight back, I'm not going to engage, and I had no one really to turn to for help, and I was separated from Lyle." The two brothers were initially housed in separate prisons, but in 2018, Lyle was transferred to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility where his brother had been serving since 2013. "I remember the day that I was told 'Lyle just got assaulted and got his jaw broken.' I'm thinking 'He's over there, I'm going through this over here, and at least we could protect each other maybe if we were together,' but we were not even allowed to be together. So it was difficult," Menéndez said. "It took years to work out of it, because you have to find yourself in prison. The Menéndez brothers have been back in the spotlight lately as they were the subjects of the hit Netflix drama Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story from creator Ryan Murphy. The two brothers were 18 and 21 when they shot and killed their parents after what they allege was decades of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at their hands. In the TV series, the brothers' relationship was presented as so close that they kissed on the mouth, stuck each other's fingers in the other's mouth, and did other homoerotic things. There's no evidence the real-life brothers had a sexual relationship at all. In a statement through a TikTok account appearing to belong to his wife, Tammi, Erik said of the show, "I believed we had moved beyond the lies and ruinous character portrayals of Lyle, creating a caricature of Lyle rooted in horrible and blatant lies rampant in the show. I can only believe they were done so on purpose. It is with a heavy heart that I say, I believe Ryan Murphy cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives so as to do this without bad intent." The brothers also seemed to be on the verge of being released from prison last year due to then-L.A. District Attorney George Gascón filed a resentencing request. However, Gascón lost his election to Nathan Hochman, who has not publicly said if he will follow in his predecessor's path.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Texas senators clear path for vote on voucher-like education plan
AUSTIN (KXAN) – Tuesday night, a Texas Senate committee approved a plan to help parents pay for private school for their children. Senate Bill 2 would create education savings accounts, a voucher-like program. The vote in the Senate Education Committee was 9-2. All Republicans on the committee voted to approve SB 2, and Democrats Royce West and José Menéndez voted against the bill. The committee vote sets the stage for the full senate to approve the bill as soon as next week, if Gov. Greg Abbott declares education savings accounts, or ESAs to be an emergency item. Under the Texas Constitution, the House and Senate cannot pass legislation during the first 60 days of a regular session, except for bills related to the governor's emergency items. Gov. Abbott will announce his list of emergency items on Feb. 2, during his State of the State Address. SB 2 carves out $10,000 per student per year to help pay for private school. Students with a disability could receive $11,500. Lawmakers plan to put $1 billion in the budget to start the program. Projections released Tuesday by the Legislative Budget Board estimate the cost of the program could grow to $3.75 billion by 2030. Similar universal voucher-like programs in Florida and Arizona also saw cost increases. The lead author of SB 2, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said the LBB estimates are flawed. 'That is fun to see how they would extrapolate the numbers,' Creighton said, adding that Texas lawmakers would be able to control costs. 'But we as a body would have to approve the growth of the program as appropriators and on the Senate floor before those fairy tale projections beyond the $1 billion plan that we're talking about now would be anything but a cartoon,' Creighton said of the projections. During the hearing, Sen. Menéndez, D-San Antonio, raised concerns that the ESA program would do little to help students from lower-income families. He noted that the $10,000 available may not fully cover the cost of private school. 'If the parents can have this $10,000 but they can't afford to make up the difference, then are they really eligible?' Menéndez asked. 'It's like, almost like a bridge that's three-quarters of the way built. It's not really good enough for them.' Creighton said private groups could help cover some of the gaps through scholarships and grants. He also pointed to data showing that $10,000 would cover tuition for 'a large majority of the private schools in Texas.' Menéndez also raised concerns that the ESA plan could negatively affect public schools. 'My concern is that we're setting aside a billion dollars for this new education savings voucher. But I haven't seen the same level of investment in our public schools,' he said during the hearing. 'I just think it concerns me that we're creating a tilting of the playing field in terms of our public schools.' 'We put $39 billion new dollars into public education in the last 10 years,' Creighton responded. He also cited budget proposals that call for an additional $5 billion in new funding for public schools this session. 'By investing in our teachers and our parents, we give future generations the greatest chance at keeping this Texas economic engine alive,' Creighton said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
