Headlines / Quote of the Week
Fri., Feb. 14, 2025
Bars Might Suffer: The recent decision by the city to once again allow car traffic on Dirty Sixth – the stretch of Sixth Street between Congress Avenue and I-35 – may be decreasing the business of the area’s many bars, KUT reports. The traffic change has been promoted as a way of making the entertainment district more safe for pedestrians and the Austin police officers who have, more and more often, been tasked with responding to street fights. But at least two bar owners interviewed by KUT’s Luz Moreno-Lozano said the changes are affecting profits.
When Texans Say Abort: Guess what? Most Texans say abortion should be allowed in cases of rape and incest, KUT reports. A January poll of 1,200 residents found that 49% want state lawmakers to pass laws making abortion easier to access in the state, but a whopping 83% believe it should be legal in cases of rape or incest; 84% want it legal when doctors diagnose fetuses with fatal conditions that would lead to their deaths before or shortly after birth.
Plants that Eat Meat: A new, absolute-must-shop enterprise has opened, KUT reports. Carnivero, a plant nursery specializing in rare, tropical, carnivorous plants, has opened on Fitzhugh Road in far Southwest Austin. The shop has pitcher plants – which trap and drown creatures from insects to small rodents, and then slowly dissolve them. It has the famous Venus flytrap, which needs no description. And it has thousands of other curiosities, many native to exotic locales like Madagascar and Indonesia.
Paxton and Cornyn Face Off: The Texas Tribune speculates, with blatant hint-hinting from Ken Paxton, that the sitting AG plans to primary Texas’ senior senator, John Cornyn, in 2026. “I’m looking potentially at the U.S. Senate,” Paxton says, per the Tribune. Cornyn, meanwhile, has said he “absolutely” will run for reelection. It’s hard to imagine Trump and his boss, Elon Musk, picking Cornyn over Paxton.
Prosecuting to His Heart’s Content: Attorney General Ken Paxton’s allies are pushing legislation to give him the power to prosecute voter fraud and abortion cases by replacing locally elected DAs. The Texas Constitution mandates that only locally elected district and county attorneys can initiate such prosecutions and the Court of Criminal Appeals overruled Paxton’s attempt to bring charges in a voter fraud case in 2021. Last election, Paxton campaigned against three of the CCA judges who sided with the Constitution, getting them knocked off the bench.
Bible Stories in Public Schools: The Texas ACLU, Freedom From Religion Foundation, and other groups are asking Texas public school officials to reject the new K-5 reading curriculum the state wants schools to adopt. The new program, called the Bluebonnet curriculum, has been widely criticized for embedding Bible stories promoting evangelical Christianity in reading instruction. The state has promised to pay school districts $60 per student to use the curriculum at a time when many are facing budget deficits because of Republicans’ refusal to allocate more funding for education.
Funding, Be Dammed, Education, Be Damned: After dismantling the good works of USAID, Austin’s unfortunate citizen Elon Musk and his young crew have turned their attention to dismantling the Department of Education. On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Musk’s unconstitutional “Department of Government Efficiency” had terminated 89 contracts and 29 grants at the Education Department that it claimed were associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion training.
Hiring Racists Is “Divine”: Musk is vowing to rehire one of the crewmembers mentioned above. Marko Elez, a 25-year-old employee of DOGE, resigned last week after being outed as the writer of a variety of disgusting posts on a social media account that has since been deleted. A post by Elez from last July read, “I was racist before it was cool.” Another said, “You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity.” JD Vance urged Musk to rehire him. Musk posted that would be “divine.”
Maximal Transparency, My Arse: At a Tuesday appearance with Trump at the Oval Office, Musk claimed, without evidence, that USAID officials had made “tens of millions of dollars” on the job. And he said DOGE is being “maximally transparent.” The New York Times countered, “In reality, Mr. Musk’s team is operating in deep secrecy: surprising federal employees by descending upon agencies and accessing sensitive data systems.”
Who Needs Earth Anyway: Trump is continuing to reverse efforts to address climate change. Last week, he ordered the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which does some of the most important climate science in the world, to identify grants it has issued related to global warming. The demand came after Musk’s DOGE gained access to NOAA’s computer systems, The New York Times reports.
Here’s the Keys: Researchers are watching Trump’s attacks on climate science with dismay. According to The Guardian, a section discussing climate on the Department of Defense’s website has been erased. “We should plan for the worst,” climate scientist Michael Mann told the Guardian’s reporters.
“The Constitutional Way” (winks in Republican): Trump’s co-conspirators in the Republican Party have stuck their necks exactly zero inches out of their shells in protest of their leader’s lawlessness. However, according to CNN, some are privately worried about all the illegal executive actions. CNN cites GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who told them, “If there are things we have to redirect, let’s do it the constitutional way.” Yeah, right.
Quote of the Week
“I don’t think there is another country that really has the science infrastructure that the United States has, and so much of that comes, at least on the biomedical side, from NIH funding. It’s the backbone of all of the American biotech industry.”
– UT Professor John Wallingford, discussing the impact of NIH funding cuts
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