Latest news with #Pfaff
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
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David Pfaff Victorious In Irving City Council Race
David Pfaff won a hotly contested Irving City Council runoff Saturday, defeating Sergio Porres with 52.74% of the vote — a margin of just 580 votes. According to the official election night report, Pfaff received 5,591 votes to Porres' 5,011, improving his May 3 general election performance, when he secured 5,230 votes to Porres' 4,987. Both candidates gained supporters during the runoff campaign, but Pfaff ultimately widened his lead. Notably, The Dallas Morning News reported that it was not allowed inside the Porres campaign's watch party Saturday night — though The Dallas Express was. Inside the room, Porres' allies reflected on the campaign's broader significance, including its effect on other council races and the city's ongoing casino debate. 'Sergio's race kinda carried this whole campaign,' said attorney Cliff Riley, a close ally of the Families for Irving PAC, which backed Porres. He credited the Place 2 challenger's candidacy with creating a surge of opposition to casino development, which he said also boosted turnout for candidates John Bloch and Adam Muller — both of whom won their respective races earlier in May. Riley likened Porres' insurgent bid to that of former State Sen. Don Huffines' 2022 primary challenge to Gov. Greg Abbott, explaining that Porres was the one pulling the Overton window to the 'right.' He specifically pointed to Pfaff's decision to include 'no casinos' in his campaign mailers as evidence that the issue had become politically 'toxic.' 'We've won a big battle,' Riley said. 'Sergio made [the casino issue] utterly toxic for the other side.' Riley also emphasized the diverse coalition Porres built, saying his campaign was effective 'because of our Muslim friends' and other religious voters who had long felt alienated by Irving's political class. At the party, Porres personally thanked former general election opponents like Vicky Oduk, who endorsed him the day after the May election and campaigned with him in the runoff. He also thanked Elena Blake, president of the Irving Republican Women, who was among his earliest backers, among many others. 'We have done a really incredible thing,' Porres told supporters. Porres expressed optimism about his future political prospects, suggesting Saturday's results had only laid the groundwork for a potential rematch. 'This was a warm-up fight,' he said. 'We are going to be unstoppable.' He also pointed to shifting demographics in Irving, saying the city's Catholic and Muslim populations — including many large families — are aligned on key cultural issues and increasingly frustrated with the status quo. 'The demographics are on our side,' Porres said. For his part, Pfaff appeared elated in a video posted to his campaign's Facebook page shortly after the result was called. In the video, Pfaff is seen smiling broadly as he approaches a projector screen displaying the vote totals, then embraces his supporters. The caption read: 'THANK YOU, IRVING!' The election capped months of tension over the city's stance on casinos — an issue that dominated political discourse even after a proposed rezoning effort was formally withdrawn. Pfaff's backers included the Lone Star Conservative Action Fund, a political group linked to Las Vegas Sands, which spent nearly $200,000 supporting his campaign and others. Pfaff publicly distanced himself from the group during the campaign, saying in a video, 'I cannot be bought.' Porres, meanwhile, campaigned aggressively on an anti-casino message and frequently questioned why casino-affiliated groups were still involved in city races if the issue was truly 'dead.' The campaign also exposed shifting alliances in Irving's Muslim community. Though CAIR Action Texas initially backed Pfaff, it later withdrew its endorsement. Other Muslim civic organizations moved to support Porres, culminating in the formation of the Irving Muslims PAC, which endorsed him exclusively. Saturday's result means Pfaff will take the Place 2 seat on the Irving City Council — a seat previously held by Brad LaMorgese, who did not seek reelection. With Pfaff's victory, the composition of the council now includes a complex blend of pro- and anti-casino voices, but momentum appears to remain with casino skeptics — a movement Porres helped galvanize, even in defeat.
Indianapolis Star
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
Last-minute change to human sexuality bill removes requirement to teach topic of consent
A last-minute change to an Indiana General Assembly bill on human sexuality instruction in Indiana's K-12 schools eliminates a proposed requirement that such instruction teach the importance of consent to sexual activity. State Sen. Gary Byrne, R-Byrneville, on Monday morning announced the change to House Bill 442, which also requires that school districts publish a list of materials used in connection with instruction on human sexuality and makes other changes aimed at increasing oversight of what's taught regarding sexual education in public schools. The original version of Byrne's bill did not contain the consent language, so the change isn't out of left field. Byrne said local school boards would still be able to choose whether or not to talk about the topic of consent, but he said there "may be different thoughts in different communities." "That can still happen," Byrne said. "We're not going to require it in this bill." The change to eliminate required teaching about consent to sexual activity is included in a conference committee report that now requires signatures from lawmakers in the House and Senate. Both chambers will then have to give the bill a final vote before it's sent to Gov. Mike Braun. That means there's still time for the bill to change before it crosses the finish line. House and Senate Democrats immediately questioned the removal of required consent language after Byrne announced it, with state Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute, saying teaching consent helps both boys and girls who might not otherwise be taught that "they can say no." Pfaff had previously convinced the Indiana House to add the consent language in the bill, which wasn't in Byrne's original version of the bill. "I don't understand how we could possibly not agree to consent to teach that as part of human sexuality," Pfaff said. State Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, said Indiana already has a problem with youth being subjected to sexual assault before they even leave high school. An Indiana Department of Health 2020 report found that more than 13% of high school girls in Indiana and 6.4% of high school boys here reported being physically forced to have unwanted sexual intercourse, and that instances of underreporting are high among Hoosier youth. "This is really important," Hunley said. Rep. Becky Cash, R-Zionsville, asked Byrne for a consideration "to put consent as age-appropriate" back in the bill. "If we were teaching this in sixth or seventh grade, it might be, 'We stay in our bubble, right? We don't touch somebody,'" Cash said. "If you decide to leave it in there, maybe it could be an alignment with age appropriateness." Byrne did not immediately reply to IndyStar's request for comment about the change to the bill.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Judge again halts CFPB's 1,500 layoffs
This story was originally published on Banking Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Banking Dive newsletter. A federal judge Friday again temporarily paused an effort by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to decimate itself. Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia halted the CFPB from cutting off employees' access to the bureau's systems – a move that had been set for 6 p.m. Eastern time Friday as part of a reduction in force the agency's acting director, Russ Vought, announced Thursday in memos to nearly 1,500 workers. 'We're not going to disburse 1,483 people into the universe and have them be unable to communicate with the agency anymore until we have determined whether that is lawful or not,' Berman Jackson said at a hearing Friday. Attorneys representing the National Treasury Employees Union asked Berman Jackson late Thursday for an emergency hearing to force the CFPB to explain how the layoffs don't violate the preliminary injunction Berman Jackson granted last month – or, for that matter, a pared-down order an appeals court issued last week. Three witnesses – two CFPB employees and an attorney representing the NTEU – submitted declarations to the court Friday, ahead of the hearing. Matthew Pfaff, chief of staff at the CFPB's Office of Consumer Response, told the court he received a notice Thursday indicating that his employment would end June 16 but that he would lose access to the CFPB's systems – 'and thus, [the] ability to work,' Pfaff said – at 6 p.m. Friday. 'This RIF action is necessary to restructure the Bureau's operations to better reflect the agency's priorities and mission,' Vought wrote in a memo to affected employees. The memo was included in Pfaff's declaration to the court. Those priorities were laid out Wednesday in a memo from the CFPB's chief legal officer, Mark Paoletta, who said the bureau would pivot its focus away from nondepository institutions and toward 'tangible harms to consumers.' In doing so, the bureau would 'shift resources away from enforcement and supervision that can be done by the States,' Paoletta wrote Wednesday. The preliminary injunction Berman Jackson issued March 28 halted any mass reductions in force. An appeals court April 11 ruled the CFPB could send a RIF notice but only when employees have been 'determined, after an individualized assessment, to be unnecessary to the performance of [the] defendants' statutory duties.' 'These RIFs appear to go well beyond what the unstayed portions of this Court's injunction permit,' lawyers for the NTEU wrote Thursday to Berman Jackson. 'It is unfathomable that cutting the Bureau's staff by 90 percent in just 24 hours, with no notice to people to prepare for that elimination, would not 'interfere with the performance' of its statutory duties, to say nothing of the implausibility of the defendants having made a 'particularized assessment' of each employee's role in the three-and-a-half business days since the court of appeals imposed that requirement.' The cuts would leave the CFPB with a headcount of around 200, according to figures reported in September. 'Entire offices, including statutorily mandated ones, have or soon will be either eliminated or reduced to a single person,' the NTEU's attorneys wrote in their motion Thursday, calling employees' impending loss of access to CFPB systems a 'functional work stoppage.' The list of affected employees cuts a wide swath across the bureau, including all of the consumer response team, except eight managers; 'virtually everyone' in the research, monitoring and regulations division; everyone in supervision policy except the head of the office; everyone in supervision examinations except the office chief; everyone in the office of fair lending; virtually everyone in cybersecurity; and the legal team in the bureau's front office, according to a declaration by Jennifer Bennett, an attorney for Gupta Wessler, which is representing the NTEU. Pfaff gave more details as to the impact in the Office of Consumer Response, noting that 'even employees who already provided notice to the CFPB of their resignation from the federal service, as well as those who accepted the deferred resignation program, received this RIF notice.' Throughout the NTEU's case against the CFPB, the office's response to consumer complaints was held up as a prime example of a statutorily mandated function of the bureau. 'No leader in Consumer Response was consulted about what is needed to operate the office's statutory duties or how the RIF would affect the complaint handling program, which is currently projected to handle more than five million complaints and more than half a million calls in 2025,' Pfaff said in his declaration Thursday. 'Nearly all staff have been informed that their positions are being eliminated — including those that unambiguously align to statutory objectives and are necessary for collecting, investigating, and responding to consumer complaints.' Pfaff said the office will shrink to a staff of eight managers from what he estimates is a headcount of 135. 'Each of those eight employees is a manager of managers who does not carry out the day-to-day tasks that permit the Office to fulfill its mandatory statutory duties,' Pfaff said. Other employees went public on social media. Elizabeth Bond, a senior adviser to the CFPB's chief technologist, received her notice while on maternity leave. 'This termination came during a time where I'm supposed to be physically recovering, bonding with my child, and supporting my own family through this transition. I'm absolutely heartbroken to see the agency I dedicated my career to be destroyed,' Bond posted Thursday on LinkedIn. 'It means terrible things for all Americans.' 'No one will be protecting consumers and looking out for their best interests,' Bond told The New York Times. Still others spoke on condition of anonymity. "Anybody should expect a letter at any time for the rest of this administration," one CFPB staffer told American Banker. "It's the sword of Damocles." At least one consumer advocate – Erin Witte, the Consumer Federation of America's director of consumer protection – cited the CFPB's appeals court order in her statement Thursday, condemning the workforce cuts. 'Sabotaging the CFPB by firing almost 90% of its remaining civil servants who protect Americans from corporate crime is hardly the 'individualized' or 'particularized' assessment that the court required the CFPB to undergo,' Witte said. 'These mass layoffs,' combined with Paoletta's reprioritization memo from Wednesday, 'provide a blueprint for would-be cheats and lawbreakers about which laws they can violate without being held accountable by our nation's supposed consumer finance 'watchdog.'' Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, the architect of the CFPB who is now the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, lamented in a statement Thursday that the agency was 'gutted.' 'Dismantling the CFPB in the face of a court order blocking an illegal shutdown is yet another assault on consumers and our democracy by this lawless Administration, and we will fight back with everything we've got,' she said. Recommended Reading FCA: Staley misled regulators about his relationship with Epstein Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Committee advances bill adding pregnancy ultrasound video to Indiana sex ed requirements
(Getty Images) Hoosier elementary school students could be required to watch a pregnancy ultrasound video as part of their curricula if a bill moving through the House keeps its momentum. Language mandating Indiana's sex education instruction to include a presentation on 'human growth and development during pregnancy' was officially baked into Senate Bill 442 on Wednesday. The add-in was approved along party lines by the House Education Committee, as was the underlying bill, which now heads to the chamber floor. Terre Haute Democrat Rep. Tonya Pfaff emphasized that the bill 'is not needed at all.' 'We already have a class on child development, which goes into a lot of detail on how a baby is grown during the nine months of pregnancy,' Pfaff said. 'I just don't like this idea of mandating that kids have to watch this. I would prefer that — if they're interested in this — watch it with their parents.' Pfaff further questioned how the ultrasound video would be selected. Republican Rep. Julie McGuire, who proposed the language, said decisions would be left to local boards. 'I found 16 videos in about 10 minutes on YouTube,' said McGuire, of Indianapolis. 'There's so much material out there. It doesn't have to be that prescriptive.' At its core, Senate Bill 442 seeks to require any instruction and learning materials used to teach 'human sexuality' for grades 4-12 be approved by a school board. Basic information about the curriculum would have to be published in a 'conspicuous' place on the school's website. That includes a list of classes, by grade level, 'in which any instruction concerning human sexuality will be taught,' and whether that instruction 'will be provided by a male or female instructor.' The school's parental consent form — which lets parents remove their children from sexual education classes — would also need a link to that information. A grievance procedure would additionally need to be in place for parents to call out non-compliant schools. Critics of the bill have repeatedly noted, however, that Indiana parents already have the right to remove their child from sex education classes. And some schools don't provide such classes at all. The House Education Committee also adopted a proposal that intends to increase transportation and facility sharing between Indianapolis Public Schools and area charters. Despite discussion earlier in the session to approve a statewide plan to boost resource sharing between traditional publics and charter schools, lawmakers kept language in Senate Bill 373 limited to just Indianapolis. The latest draft of the legislation moved to the chamber floor on Wednesday in a 9-3 vote. The introduction of sex education usually starts in the fourth grade, according to state guidelines. But Indiana does not require the course in schools. Instead, it only mandates that schools teach lessons on HIV and AIDS. Schools that do teach sex education are expected to focus on abstinence. Currently, school boards have the authority to review and approve curricular materials. State law further requires school corporations to make instructional materials available to parents so that they can consent to instruction on human sexuality. But bill author Sen. Gary Byrne, R-Byrneville, questioned if school boards 'are actually having conversations' about that curriculum. He previously said the proposal stemmed from concerns brought to him by teachers and parents, and that his intention is to 'help parents better decide whether they want to opt their child out' of sex ed courses. Byrne introduced a similar bill in 2024 that advanced from the Senate but died in the House without a committee hearing. The ultrasound provision would require students to view a 'high-definition ultrasound video,' at least three minutes long, 'showing the development of the brain, heart, sex organs and other vital organs in early fetal development;' as well as a 'high-quality computer-generated rendering or animation' showing 'the process of fertilization and each stage of fetal development inside the uterus, noting significant markers in cell growth and organ development for every week of pregnancy from fertilization to birth.' Like Pfaff, Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, maintained that 'I don't think we should be doing this.' 'I thought we were having legislation on human sexuality and the training of human sexuality — not lessons on maternity or chordate anatomy, which seems to be what this is,' he said. 'I think this opens this bill up to a serious discussion on the (House) floor about education and videos about STDs and everything else that in any way is related to sex.' In a separate move, House lawmakers abandoned contentious language that could have increased permissions for high school students to leave school for religious instruction. Sen. Spencer Deery, R-West Lafayette, framed his Senate Bill 255 as a means to tighten up existing law by preventing public high school students from missing large amounts of time from one class for out-of-school faith-based lessons. Hoosier students are already permitted to miss up to 120 minutes of class each week for optional religious instruction hosted off school grounds. Lawmakers debate if students should miss some — or all — of a class for religious instruction Deery's bill suggested a tweak, however, to allow older students to effectively replace an elective course with religious instruction. The existing two-hour limit for elementary and middle school students would remain the same. The proposal was criticized by House Democrats, who questioned how an increased exemption for religious instruction would benefit students. They emphasized, too, that Deery's proposed changes could permit daily absences and more than double the amount of time that can be spent away from traditional classes. Although the bill advanced to the House floor last month, committee chairman Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, said the religious instruction language was found to be nongermane — too irrelevant — to the underlying bill, which mainly deals with teacher transition programs. The committee sent the bill back to the chamber on Wednesday with the provision on religious instruction gone entirely. Tensions also rose over a bill that would require Indiana's Commission for Higher Education (CHE) to have a heavier hand in higher education programming and decision-making. Under Senate Bill 448, which advanced to the House floor along party lines, CHE would have to review all public college and university degree programs — currently there are more than 3,000 — at least once every 10 years. When doing so, the commission would have to consider factors like labor markets, job placement, stackable credentials and work-based learning to determine if a degree should continue to be offered. Among the bill's other provisions is another requirement for university boards of trustees to 'assess and review the staffing needs' of the school during tenure reviews, which would then have to be shared with CHE. 'What I want to make sure is that we're being smart as we're educating and developing the workforce, and to make sure that we put Indiana first — while at the same time — continue to be a magnet for individuals from outside of Indiana,' said bill author Sen. Greg Goode, R-Terre Haute. Indiana Higher Education Commissioner Chris Lowery was on board, but Democrats were not. They worried, for example, that CHE would have 'too much power' to approve or disapprove university programs and faculty. Concerns were also raised over academic freedom implications that could come from potentially limiting programs that aren't directly tied to workforce needs. DeLaney repeatedly argued that the bill transforms CHE's relationship with universities, from a collaborative partner to a mandate-driven authority. 'For those who want to be really nervous, you pass this, and the gentleman down the hall — the lieutenant governor — becomes the governor, and who does he put in charge the Commission on Higher Education? And how much power do we want that person to have?' DeLaney said. 'That's what the stakes are here. This is about taking a cooperative system, that's evolved over decades and has succeeded, and making it a mandate-from-above system.' 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Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Indiana House OKs partisan school board elections
A bill that paves the way for partisan school board elections in Indiana has passed out of the House and is a step closer to becoming law. On Monday, the House passed Senate Bill 287 by a vote of 54 to 40. The House's amended bill now goes back to the Senate. According to Chalkbeat Indiana, which covers education issues, the bill passed by the House gives school board candidates the option to state a party affiliation (Republican or Democrat), identify as an independent or remain nonpartisan in general elections. It creates mechanisms for county parties to challenge an affiliation, and provides that a straight ticket vote does not apply to school board offices. It also provides for optional raises for school board members. The bill passed by the House doesn't require a primary election for school board candidates. However, in the version passed by the Senate, the bill would have required school board candidates to go through the same primary process as other political candidates, Chalkbeat reported. The Senate can accept the House amendments, ask for a conference committee to iron out differences, or it could let the bill die. State Rep. Bruce Borders, R-Jasonville, voted in favor. He said he originally opposed the legislation but changed his mind after further study. 'I think voters will be glad for this change,' he said. He believes it will prompt more people to run for school board and to vote in school board elections. He also believes it will generate more interest in school board meetings. Borders also believes that school board races already tend to be somewhat political, when considering campaign contributions. 'The more I got to looking at the money that was poured into a lot of school board races by the [Indiana State Teachers Association] … I thought, you know this is already in a sense a political race,' Borders said. Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute, voted against the bill. In a statement, Pfaff said the bill makes Indiana's school board elections partisan, requiring candidates to run as Democrat, Republican, Independent or with a blank space next to their name. Under the federal Hatch Act, employees of the U.S. government or organizations that receive federal funding are prohibited from engaging in partisan political activity, she said. Turning school board races into partisan elections would effectively bar thousands of qualified, community-minded Hoosiers from serving in these vital roles. 'During a recent visit to Crane Naval Base — one of Indiana's largest high-tech employers — I was reminded just how many Hoosiers would be impacted by this change,' Pfaff stated. 'With over 3,800 employees, many of whom are deeply invested in their local schools, this bill would strip away their ability to serve on school boards simply because of where they work.' Terry Spradlin, executive director of the Indiana School Boards Association, said that federal employees could still run, but if opposed by another candidate who declares party affiliation, then the race becomes partisan. The federal employee would then have to make a choice to withdraw from the race. If the federal employee is uncontested, they can still serve, Spradlin said. Pfaff said school boards should be focused on student success, not party politics. 'Injecting partisanship into these races opens the door to national political agendas creeping into our classrooms,' Pfaff said. 'Instead of picking political fights, let's tackle the real challenges: improving literacy, strengthening math skills, addressing the teacher shortage, and getting more students into college or prepared for the workforce. These aren't partisan goals — they're Hoosier priorities.' Spradlin, in a statement, said ISBA has fought against the move to partisan school board elections for multiple legislative sessions dating back to 2022. 'ISBA's longstanding position has been to keep school board elections in our state as nonpartisan, like in 41 other states in the U.S.,' he said. While the Indiana General Assembly has now voted to make school board elections partisan once new board members are elected, 'ISBA will encourage school board members to leave politics at the board room door by working collaboratively to focus on what is best for our 1 million public school students,' Spradlin stated. While the bill is not yet law, 'It's pretty close to becoming a formality at this juncture,' he said. 'We've been told they [Senate] will concur with the changes.' If the bill becomes law, it would take effect this July; however, there are no school board elections in Indiana in 2025.
