Texas Tech expands draconian "Don't Say Gay" stance

Texas Tech gets worse, officially adopting a policy that, per Erin in the Morning, is basically "Don't Say Gay," not only for profs, but for students on dissertation and paper subjects and such. And, it's not just for Tech itself, but the whole Tech System, that also includes Midwestern State, Angelo State, and two health science centers.

Here's the nutgraf:

Under the new policy, all majors, minors, certificates, and graduate degrees "centered on" sexual orientation or gender identity will be eliminated. Provosts at each university must identify every affected program and submit finalized lists to the chancellor's office by June 15, 2026, at which point an immediate admissions freeze will take effect—no new students will be allowed to enroll in or declare any of the targeted programs. Currently enrolled students will be allowed to finish their degrees through a teach-out process, but once the last of them graduates, the fields will cease to exist at Texas Tech entirely.

Yikes. 

How much will this affect their bottom line, that is, enrollment? Many public as well as private schools face enrollment problems due to already bulging college costs. Why pay to go to a censorious university that won't let you study what you think you should study, not even for one class, that unconstitutionally tried to censor your right to protest, and will be losing professors?

I mean, just tuition at Tech for an in-state student is more than $10,000 a year. Total attendance cost is $25K or more for an on-campus in-state student.

I went to a private college long ago, with approximately $6K a year paying the full freight. (It wasn't a fancy one by any means.) Even adjusting for inflation, that's $18K a year today. 

I mean, college costs in general are ridiculous today, but add this on top of that? 

Final question: who sues? This clearly strikes me as First Amendment viewpoint discrimination.

Chris Hooks undercuts himself on redistricting battles

Here's CD Hooks' take on the state-by-state redistricting semi-wash (not a wash yet with Virginia's on judicial hold):

When Texas needs something from the Feds—say, disaster aid after a hurricane—it benefits from having both Democrats and Republicans from its congressional delegation in senior positions in Congress. Republican state lawmakers advocated for the gerrymander by arguing that it was in the state’s core interest to ensure that the next Congress was Republican-controlled. But Democrats are likely to win control of the House—likelier to do so now because of what the Texas Legislature did—so the Legislature has weakened the negotiating position of the state in D.C. by shrinking the number of Democrats in the delegation and knocking out at least a few more well-regarded Democratic incumbents.

Sidebar: Ain't it funny to see the number of anti-gerrymandering opinion pieces in places like the NY Post AFTER the Virginia vote? 

That said, Hooks spoils it by entering the land of naivete:

There just might be a silver lining to this mess. If, after the midterm, there is national momentum toward a kind of grand bargain on redistricting, a meaningfully good thing will have come out of the Texas Legislature. The nation could, in theory, work out some kind of compact to limit redistricting to set intervals, say, or task independent commissions with drawing district lines on common criteria—proposals that are already favored by Democrats. But the change will have come from Texas lawmakers themselves learning the hard way that when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.

Can I have the hopium you're smoking? Dems are not winning back the state House and certainly not the state Senate. 

Yes, the other half of his narrative is true, that state Rethuglicans screwed themselves. But, the final fallout of redistricting will have empowered Trump, if anything. After the midterms, we'll get even more "fake elections" rants and even more push for state voter data. 

Ten Commandments in Tex-ass schools? Constitutional, per Fifth Circuit

In a 9-8 full court ruling, the Fifth Circuit upheld Texas law about cramming the Ten Commandments into public schools. Contra Kuff, I am actually kind of shocked. Wingnuts they may be otherwise, but the court has in the past generally been decent on First Amendment issues.

This quote:

“It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” according to the ruling. “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.”

Is bullshit.

First, it DOES tell children in public schools what they should believe. THAT is the definition of establishment of religion.

Slate notes in detail how it's coercive, riffing on the Supreme Court's support for parental rights in various rulings:

If it’s true that parental rights are so important, then the 5th Circuit has to be wrong in upholding the Texas Ten Commandments law. The court tried to downplay this point by saying that it is just a “poster” and therefore lacks any coercive effect. But posters exist in educational settings so that they can educate. This is not a photo of a kitten saying “Believe in yourself!” A reproduction of a major religious text is bound to have an impact on the classroom experience. What happens when the first student asks a question about that large poster on the wall? If the teacher answers in a manner that showcases approval of the Ten Commandments, won’t the student feel pressured to agree? Or what if the teacher tells the student, as the 5th Circuit suggests, to simply ignore the poster? Could the state then punish the teacher for showing “anti-Christian” bias?

It also notes how it defies Supreme Court precedent:

What’s most remarkable about the decision, though, is not its support for theocracy, but its direct defiance of the Supreme Court. In 1980, justices struck down a law virtually identical to Texas’, forbidding states from placing the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. By flouting this precedent, the 5th Circuit effectively went rogue, daring the Supreme Court to check its brazen disobedience.

That said, that was 1980, Slate. The Roberts Court has overridden precedent left and right. Somewhat in light of that, Slate notes:

What’s most remarkable about the decision, though, is not its support for theocracy, but its direct defiance of the Supreme Court. In 1980, justices struck down a law virtually identical to Texas’, forbidding states from placing the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. By flouting this precedent, the 5th Circuit effectively went rogue, daring the Supreme Court to check its brazen disobedience.

 You think the Blind Umpire is really that worried? The only way he and other Catholics get concerned is if the Calvinist/Baptist version, barring graven images, is the only version allowed.

Frankly, per Slate's reference to 2022's Kennedy case, the court might now be looking for a reason to explicitly junk Lemon. We shall see. 

And, even if SCOTUS overturns, the damage will have been done. 

Net zero hypocrisies in Denton

The Observer reports on Denton's hypocrisies of more roads (and other things) versus a carbon net zero pledge. The bottom line:

Population pressure is real, and much of this construction is driven by state and county decisions Denton cannot fully control. But the city still holds levers it is not using. It can prioritize sidewalk and trail funding at the same level of urgency with which it funds road bonds. It can align development approvals with transit access rather than car dependence. And it can ensure that its positions on state-level highway expansion are consistent with its net-zero commitment. 

These choices have concrete costs. Ground-level ozone is already a documented crisis in this region, and every additional lane mile compounds it. The Climate Action Plan already identifies the tools needed to change course. The question is how consistently those tools are applied in practice. The orange barrels will eventually come down. The question is whether Denton will use the years of construction ahead to make different choices, or simply wait for the next plan to also go unread.

There you are. 

Living north of Little D, I find the I-35 expansion in Cooke County totally unnecessary not just for today but beyond, and of course, there's limited mass transit up here. 

Mojave National Preserve is full of shit

No really and yes literally. I noticed it myself on vacation last month. I thought I was in Grand Staircase-Escalante or Cascade-Siskyou national monuments, which are respectively, for the not knowing, BLM and USFS lands. I knew it had to be grazing leases and not just inholdings, based on the trail I was on, signage and fencings.

I did the google and got that link above, and it's even more disconcerting 

As of five years ago, at least, cows were even allowed in wilderness areas of the preserve, which, unlike the two sites above, is a National Park Service unit.

Ridiculous. What's being preserved?

It's like Dear Leader when he expanded Cascade-Siskyou because "sensitive habitat" and never made any effort to cut down on grazing leases. 

The issue is that this (under Clinton) and later actions under Obama and Biden are how Democrat presidents pretend to be environmentalists. 

That said, this sign: 

Shows larger problems with the NPS. What's blacked out? Why? How many years ago? Will the services that have been blacked out ever be fixed? If not, will NPS ever pay for permanent new signs?

When I saw this, I was reminded of a restaurant bleeding money that starts cutting items from the menu but is too cheap to print new menus to reflect that.

And no, this isn't "all Trump's fault." I am sure the black tape blackouts were done more than 15 months ago. 

Also, per friend Lyle Lewis, it's not the only NPS unit with grazing leases still active.

Also not Trump's fault, but the fault of both halves of the duopoly in Congress, which refuse to raise federal grazing rates to match that of private land in the West. About 3 percent of all your Merikkkan beef is grazed on federal land of any sort in its life. About 0.3 percent is grazed on (theoretically) protected federal land. In other words, this wouldn't affect the price of your steak at all.

And, I said both halves of the duopoly?

Look at the related issue of mining, where the government consistently refuses to raise rates and fees for hard-rock mining on federal land. For many, many years, the lead opposition to that was Democratic Sen. Harry Reid. I've long said we need to up both.

Then, there's the issue of inholdings.

A lot of NPS units have them, but Mojave is one of the worst. The boundaries of the preserve, as presented on the park's map as shown on the website and printed on the "trifold" slick brochure have little connection to reality. And, most of the inholdings are ranch land. I originally thought that the shit I saw near the Rings Loop trail was due to inholdings, not grazing leases, until I first checked details of how fences ran and knew it couldn't have been an inholding, then did teh Google and got the link above. 

And we haven't even touched on all the National Recreation Areas in the NPS, most of which are damned lakes behind damned dams, all of which violates the Organic Act. I've called them out for this before.

That said, this isn't new and isn't limited to Mojave. Carsten Lien's excellent book on the history of Olympic has a fair amount of discussion of the dirtiness of the Park Service in general. 

And, speaking of cows and cow shit, let's not forget Point Reyes. 

Texas Progressives roundup — special elections, nature vacations, more

Off the Kuff considers the possibilities for a special election in CD23. 

SocraticGadfly talks about "Death Valley Days" — the heart of his recent vacation, not a remake of the 1950s black and white TV oater.

Even if ERCOT is off by a factor of two, a doubling, not even a quadrupling, of electric power demand in just six years would be massively alarming. 

Will the Texas Medical Board's sanctioning of three doctors over inadequate care for pregnant women with complications, because the doctors were worried about the state's abortion ban, get either the Texas Lege or TMB to further address the issue next year? Probably not. Will yet more OB/GYN docs either quit practice or else leave the state? Possibly. 

Ibogaine clinical trials? Sure, cuz Dannie Goeb, alt-medicine, pseudomedicine and ivermectin in the wingnut world. And, per the story, it's likely a boondoggle.

Allen West: Not wingnut enough for Dallas County GOP. 

The Monthly visits the annual confab of the Philosophical Society of Texas, which can't be too philosophical if Shrub Bush is a member. 

Tech being sued over free speech and Charlie Kirk's death. 

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Bik upended the scientific research publication world. 

Mondoweiss says that Israhell is rushing to do more West Bank settlements because an opportunity is closing. I am skeptical of Dems, if they regain Congress, cutting off aid pipelines that much, especially if Trump vetoed any bill they were a part of. 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said we must show up for ourselves to speak, or in protest, at Houston City Council at Public Comment Session, Tuesday, 4/21. We must contact Council. Repeal of the ICE ordinance at command of Abbott means Houston is run by the far-right such as the police union.

The Texas Signal wonders what will happen when Texas experiences another disaster.

Pete von der Haar contemplates the Pope.

Your Local Epidemiologist expounds on EKGs and women's health, with a story line on The Pitt as a starting point.

The Dallas Observer checks in on Fort Worth ISD as it starts its taken-over journey.

Franklin Strong presents the Book Loving Texans' Guide to the May 2026 Elections, which this time allows for more of a focus on good candidates than on bad ones.