Hearst vs Alden in Dallas, or The Snooze between the devil and the deep blue sea

With Hearst, already owning Houston, San Antonio, Austin (I forgot that they bought the Stateless earlier this year, somehow) Laredo, Beaumont and Midland, along with a few yet-smaller properties, is its purchase of the Dallas Snooze good for journalism in Texas? Michael Hardy discusses that at the Monthly. I can say that, at a minimum, it's better than vulture capitalist Alden owning the Snooze, Michael. On the other hand, especially seeing how the SA Express-News is treated as not much more than an appendage of the Chronic, and suspecting that's started happening at the Stateless, and knowing that it's surely happened to Beaumont, which is otherwise in the crapper, I can understand worries about how other papers outside Houston will lose, or have already lost, individual identities.

But, that's a lesser issue than the future of journalism. Even if the Chronic itself hasn't been gutted, the Stateless acquisition shows Hearst is no white knight overall:

Some journalists at Hearst’s Texas papers have a less rosy view of their employer. When Hearst bought the Statesman this spring, it declined to ratify the contract that the paper’s union had signed with Gannett just a few months earlier. Hearst and the union are in negotiations over a new contract; in the meantime, the company has laid off the paper’s copy editors, eliminated job protections, and cut some employee benefits. In May, the Austin News Guild filed an unfair labor practices charge against Hearst with the National Labor Relations Board.

I mean, yes, with more and more of a truly digital first world? Those copy editing positions are dead in the water. Do you want to pick up a reporter's notebook or microcasette player?

But? Some are still needed, and laying them ALL off sure as hell looks like union-busting. It does so to the unionized in Dallas, and at Hearst papers elsewhere:

In July, the union issued a statement on X expressing alarm at the paper’s sale: “The experiences of our colleagues at other Hearst papers have left us with concerns that we look forward to addressing with Hearst leadership.” This was followed by an open letter to Hearst from unionized journalists in California, Connecticut, New York, and Texas urging the company to refrain from “intimidation tactics and inappropriate discipline meant to scare journalists into silence or complacency.”

Ugh.

An additional problem is that Hearst is privately owned, so it can say it needs to bust unions for the bottom line, but, unless somebody leaks some financials, who can tell, and there's no shareholder pressure anyway.

As an additional note, online personal friend Chris Tomlinson, author of "Tomlinson Hill" and other books, is at the Chronic — and by extension, at the Expressed-News. And maybe at the Stateless now. His social media doesn't comment on the acquisition. 

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Now, how does this play out in the longer term?

Beyond Hearst? Craphouse (sic), the half of the post-merger company that is the tail wagging the dog of the new Gannett, owns El Paso, Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, Abilene and Corpus Christi, and continues to implode. In other words, outside of Odessa, two chains own all dailies in West and West Central Texas, and Hearst making a bid for Odessa and a consolidation with Midland wouldn't surprise me. CNHI, a chain that's the crappiest one not owned by a hedge fund, owns many newspapers in Texas that were dailies before COVID. It's not quite imploding, but just falling apart more and more. 

The StartleGram is owned by hedge-fund controlled McClatchy, which also continues to implode.

Papers inside or near the Triangle, since, setting aside Cowtown, Hearst will now pretty much control all points? Temple remains privately owned by the Mayborn family and won't be sold. Waco and Bryan-College Station are both part of Lee Enterprises, whose flagship is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. They might sell.

In the Valley? Hearst, if the price is right, might look to move further south from Laredo. It wouldn't need to buy everything, just one or another of Brownsville, Harlingen etc, and then use its growing clout.

That leaves East Texas, east of where CNHI trails off, as more competitive for now.

Also, a side note to journalism union hater Jim Schutze? STFU.

Texas Dems and 2026 elections: first thoughts

Chris Hooks at the Monthly discusses how (soon) the walkout will end and other details. (He's partially wrong about Joe Manchin in 2021: Sen. Yachtsman backed re-instating "preclearance," but only if done nationally, and I agreed at the time.) And, otherwise riffing on him? Ending the quorum break early starts legal challenges early. And if, between this and Trump unpopularity (Kerrville will be a great 2026 campaign issue) if Dems can't win diluted districts, then they might as well admit Texas is actually Alabama.

Seriously. They booted, finally, Gilberto Hinojosa from the deck and wheel of the SS Texas Democrats Minnow. Will it be enough? Gene Wu's first term as House minority leader didn't impress, and can you even name the state Senate minority leader (or majority leader) off the top of your head? I can't.

 Beyond that, Hooks knows that polls pitting a named Rethuglican against a nameless generic Democrap (or vice versa) are next to worthless.

Lesser prairie chicken gets screwed again — does US Fish and Wildlife tank ESA listings?

An indicator species of the high plains, the lesser prairie chicken, a type of grouse, can't get any environmental protection love and has been ill-treated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (It got two years of "threatened" listing, then that was removed due to court ruling of being improperly instituted. It's been talked about for an "endangered" listing for 25 years; the oil people hate it like they hate the dunes sagebrush lizard.) 

Fast forward six years, to a re-listing. And, another loss.

Last week, the lesser prairie chicken's endangered listing got nixed by a judge. (When I saw the judge was from the Western District of Texas, before I saw the actual name, I thought it was Matthew Kacsmaryk, but I guess ESA attacks aren't high-enough profile for him.)   

Contra the dunes sagebrush lizard, going beyond the "in the field" level, this time, FWS had stood up to the oil and gas industry, which is why they brought the lawsuit.

But, it's another loss, and a loss that does, per the header, make things look that way, like FWS tanks.

Details from the ruling:

"Fish and wildlife's concession points to serious error at the very foundation of its rule," the court said in its Aug. 12, 2025, ruling. 

"Mere remand would not cure this error. Fish and wildlife therefore commits no handwaving when it also concedes that this failure causes the final listing rule to be 'unlawful' and therefore 'not in accordance to law.'" 

USFWS told the court that the agency's failure to "support the identification of the lesser prairie chicken as distinct population segments taints the findings" by the Biden administration that those populations were listable as endangered. 

USFWS said it plans to complete a new finding on the lesser prairie chicken by Nov. 30, 2026, in response to a 2016 listing petition by environmental groups that gave rise to the Biden administration rule.

So, per the "in the field"? I asked online friend and Race to Extinction author Lyle Lewis if USFWS ever "tanks" these filings.

His response?

Maybe? Ha! It’s very difficult to be in USFWS in Washington without being a political animal.

— Lyle Lewis (@Race2Extinct) August 15, 2025

Well, there you go. 

The Texas Monthly provides more information about how US Fish and Wildlife Service is a quisling pseudoenvironmental organization, with a detailed blow-by-blow of its total cave-in on what had been a planned massive expansion of Muleshoe NWR out in the Panhandle. And part of that is about the lesser prairie chicken.

Alex Fairly is so done with Wilks and Dunn

Alex Fairly, the Amarillo GOP megadonor (and bit of a political naif, at a minimum, at least a year ago) is apparently totally done with Wilks and Dunn, and says he'll sue the state GOP if it carries through on a threat from last year to block by censure from running in next year's primary GOP House legiscritters who broke from the GOP caucus' endorsement of David Cook to vote for Dustin Burrows. Here's the details:

“The discussions taking place by the State Republican Executive Committee to block candidates from appearing on the primary ballot is not only unlawful, it’s disastrous for the Republican Party of Texas,” Fairly said in a statement, in which he vowed to “fully fund” a legal opposition effort.

His own daughter, Housecritter Caroline Fairly, author of the student cellphone bill, could be among those censured and blocked. She has not yet faced official county-level GOP action, but these people have:

So far, county parties have initiated censures against at least eight state representatives: Angie Chen Button of Garland, Giovanni Capriglione of Southlake, Charlie Geren of Fort Worth, Cody Harris of Palestine, Stan Lambert of Abilene, John McQueeney of Fort Worth, Morgan Meyer of University Park, Angelia Orr of Itasca.

Getcha popcorn!

Interestingly, Texas GOP head Abraham George, who was an early pusher of the censure-and-block idea, is now playing buddy-buddy with Burrows, at least for public consumption.

Per the story, the State Republican Executive Committee could officially start the process at a meeting in October.

Why won't the left hand of the duopoly admit they're not REALLY environmentalists?

To be honest, I'm not talking only about elected national or state-level Democraps, like our past two presidents, like the current governor of New Mexico and others.

I'm also talking about the rank-and-file, reasonably intelligent, reasonably politically active Donkey voters who don't like to hear that about their elected "betters," but will also go out of their way to defend them, AND, beyond that, maybe aren't that environmentalist themselves.

This is a riff on last week's post about a tribalist duopoly ban.

Before I get to some of the stuff copy-pasta'ed from there?

Let's look at oil drilling.

Both Dear Leader and Green Fake Deal Biden promoted "all of the above" for "energy." This included continued drilling permits on BLM and USFS land. Outside Mag has Biden's background:

During his 2020 campaign, Biden swore not to open any new public lands for drilling. And at first, he was true to his word, issuing an executive order that paused all new oil and gas leases. But in 2021, a federal judge struck down his ban on drilling, and public outcry ratcheted up amid rising gas prices. In 2022, Biden went back on his campaign promise and opened Bureau of Land Management land in Colorado, Nevada, North Dakota, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah to drilling. 

Afterward, Biden’s administration approved additional oil and gas permits at a rate comparable to Trump during his first term. Biden also approved the massive, long-disputed Willow Project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, which will involve drilling up to 199 new oil and gas wells over 30 years. Many of the leases approved by Biden were sold by former presidents—ConocoPhillips bought the Willow project lease back in 1999. 

But there’s no getting around the fact that U.S. domestic crude oil production grew to more than any country, ever, during his time in office. 

“Every day that you are allowing [the industry] to remain in the room, that you are indulging their fantasies about continued production, that you are allowing them to kind of peddle their false solutions and prolong their existence, you’re shooting yourself in the foot,” Collin Rees, U.S. program manager for Oil Change International, told E&E News in 2024.

"But they had to issue those leases!"

No they didn't. If nothing else, since the Pentagon had said, before the end of Obama's time in office, that climate change was a national security measure, they had the opening right there to ban oil leases. Or per federal judicial rulings by that time and later, to essentially stop such drilling by carbon-emission environmental impact findings.

And, I've said time after time that Obama got in bed with Xi Jinping to make the Paris Accords totally voluntary Jell-O. Too bad that doesn't fit the left hand of the dupoly's narrative.

As for the ban? It was related to a comment of mine on a post I POSTED at r/nationalpark about the Grand Canyon Lodge burning at the North Rim.

A respondent said Obama didn't cut NPS firefighting. 

Maybe he did. Obama DID cut the budget for individual national parks. There you are, certain Reddit soy boy.

That link comes off Google's AI, which also returned all of this:

I focused on stuff that came out of Obama's presidential budget.

Here's more on that third bullet point:

The President's Fiscal Year 2013 budget released today requests $2.6 billion to support the bureau's critical national recreation, preservation and conservation mission. The 2013 President's budget request fully funds $27.0 million in fixed costs and provides increases totaling $39.2 million to fund essential programs and emerging operational needs. Reflecting the President's call for fiscal discipline and sustainability, the budget also includes $67.2 million in strategic reductions in park and program operations, construction, and heritage partnership programs. 

This is the same O'Bummer who listened to Rahmbo Emanuel on cutting the size of his stimulus. 

But wait, that's not all. 

In February 2012, a National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) announcement noted that President Obama's proposed budget included cuts exceeding $20 million for the parks themselves, leading to a net reduction of 218 full-time rangers and other park service staff. (That's also the link above.)

The NPS budget for deferred maintenance (addressing the backlog of repairs) was reportedly cut during the first three years of the Obama Administration, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior (.gov). (link was dead, to Trump content)

The National Park Service (.gov) confirmed in 2015 that the President's Fiscal Year 2013 budget included $67.2 million in "strategic reductions" in park and program operations, construction, and heritage partnership programs.

An ABC News article from 2012 reported on potential staffing cuts for national parks under Obama's budget, particularly affecting seasonal staff. 

Not just Dear Leader, either. Fake Green New Deal, per a leading group like National Parks Conservation Association, cut money for an already massive deferred maintenance backlog. That is listed after several "goods."

Let's pivot to land protection, namely the tussle over Bear's Ears. Both Obama and Biden, while using the Antiquities Act, made it and other national monuments — but kept them in their original BLM or Forest Service oversight. Even before Trump 1.0's threatened downsizing, places like Grand Staircase-Escalante (who? Clinton) showed this approach didn't work well. Yes, making the NPS national monuments would have burdened it even more. But, at least somewhat better protected them.  I've opposed non-NPS monuments for these and other reasons for a decade in this space.

On Bears Ears in particular? I offered my first thought nearly a decade ago. I wrote again two years later. Today, I'm not totally sure a BLM NM is better than nothing, or not that much better.

As for my original comment? Even before the NPS centennial celebration itself, here's Dear Leader already pushing backdoor privatization at the Park Service.

Or, to current times, and in Congress, look at all the Democraps supporting environmentally destructive bitcoin mining. 

You Dumbocrats keep falling for this. 

You fall for Bears Ears. Neither Obama nor Biden made it part of the National Park Service with orders to phase out multi-use shit, even though we see how problematic Grand Staircase-Escalante has been. 

Then you keep attacking the messengers of truth.

And, then, many of you claim people like me "really" voted for Trump. 

 I grow more and more tired of these lies.

Texas Progressives talks bombs, Gaza, more

The Texas Progressives, as curated by me, beyond what Kuff does, had enough international stuff, and enough Gaza stuff to give him a bit of a kick on that, for me to separate it from the rest of the Roundup.

SocraticGadfly talked about the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and also Nagasaki and Korean history.

Joe Costello notes (with just hints, snarkily, of the problematic nature of this) how many companies are investing in bitcoin.

How and why did NYC Mayor Eric Adams start sucking up to Trump? Blame Dr. Phil.

Mondoweiss calls out the MSM for complicity in the Gaza genocide.

A Dallas ER doc saw babies burned to death in Gaza. 

Killing journalists is among the IDF war crimes in Gaza that Off the Kuff likes to ignore.

Trump's attempts to stop fentanyl smuggling are way behind the curve.