Midweek News Update

Live from the smoky halls of Caesar's Palace

Happy Wednesday, and welcome to the ninth edition of Waco Can’t Wait, a progressive newsletter focusing on McLennan County, Texas, and Federal politics. My wife and I are in Las Vegas this week, so I will be keeping it simple by only providing some important news highlights from the last week.

I was planning on providing a review of the Texas Democratic Primary, but Harris County dropped the ball by not counting approximately 10,000 mail-in ballots (about 6,000 of them being Democratic ballots). This race has left the Democratic Primary Runoff for Attorney General hanging in the balance, with Joe Jaworski and Lee Merritt only separated by 1,418 votes. This will likely have to wait until next week as they finalize the counts.

Lastly, I am looking for some suggestions on things to write about in the future! If there is something y’all would like to hear more about that I am not covering, please consider filling out this Reader Survey. Now, let’s take a look at the news!

Week in review (a collection of news from Waco, Texas, and beyond)

Waco:

The March 1st primaries are over (mostly), and we now have a clear picture of who our general election candidates will be. I will be saying more once the results become clearer out of Harris County, but it appears that we will have an exciting slate of candidates this coming November.

Texas:

Greg Abbott has directed the Texas Education Agency to create a task force to address Texas’ teacher shortage. Seriously? This is coming from the same Governor who has been a cheerleader for book banning and restricting what teachers can say in their own classrooms. The current teacher turnover rate is about 14.3%, and a poll commissioned by the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers showed that 66% of respondents had considered leaving the profession in the last year. Any task force should have a seat at the table for our teacher organizations, and should focus on longstanding issues like pay, class size, and high-pressure organized testing.

The Office of Housing and Urban Development has found that the Texas General Land Office (GLO) discriminated against minorities when it denied flood aid to Houston and Harris County. This comes after the GLO initially denied Houston and Harris County more than $1 billion in federal relief funds for Hurricane Harvey relief. The GLO is led by none other than George P. Bush, who is currently in a runoff with Ken Paxton for the Republican nomination for Attorney General.

Beto O’Rourke has been sued by oil tycoon Kelcy Warren, alleging defamation for Beto’s “criticism of the windfall profits that Warren’s company made after the 2021 winter storm — and [Warren’s] $1 million donation to Abbott afterward.” Warren claims that Beto pointing out any connection between Warren’s company’s profits, the large political contribution, and Abbott’s failure to act is defamation, slander and libel. Give me a break.

Patrick Svitek @PatrickSvitek

.@BetoORourke tells reporters in Dallas that Kelcy Warren is suing him, alleging defamation over O'Rourke's criticism of Energy Transfer Partners' windfall profits from the 2021 winter storm #TXGOV

Finally, here is a good bit of political satire I read over the weekend:

We’re Protecting Children By Criminalizing Parents Who Try To Keep Them Happy And Healthy by Bobbie Armstrong

Elsewhere:

President Biden has announced a ban on U.S. imports of Russian oil and gas. While the Biden administration was originally concerned with the effect this kind of ban might have on the increasing price of gas, the American people seem less concerned. In a recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, 71% of adults said they would support a ban on Russian oil, even if it meant higher gasoline prices in the United States. Hard to argue with numbers like that.

After Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech, Senator Joe Manchin has proposed a new legislative package similar to the Build Back Better package he previously rejected. Manchin has proposed a party-line bill using the reconciliation process that would raise taxes on the wealthy, lower the cost of prescription drugs, reduce the deficit, and provide funding for climate and social programs. All of this is subject to further debate, but the fact that Manchin is proposing this seems to bode well for the package’s survival.

Ezra Klein @ezraklein

Manchin is floating a deal where you raise revenue with taxes and prescription drug reform, split the money between climate and debt reduction, and shelve the social spending. It's not the bill I'd write. But if he means it, it's far better than failure.

politico.comDems agonize over Manchin’s wish list: Taxes, prescription drugs, climate cash“And the social issues, we basically have to deal with those” afterward, the West Virginia centrist said in a post-State of the Union interview.

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