A&M President Out After Tumultuous Week
Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III will step down on Fridayafter more than a week of turmoil sparked by a viral video of a student confronting a professor over gender content in a children’s literature course, the Texas A&M University System announced Thursday.
The video, along with an audio recording of Welsh initially refusing to fire Professor Melissa McCoul, first circulated online on Sept. 8 after state Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, shared it on the social media platform X.
Welsh fired McCoul a day later, but the move did not satisfy Harrison, or Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who did not think Welsh handled the situation properly.
“His ambivalence on the issue and his dismissal of the student’s concerns by immediately taking the side of the professor is unacceptable,” Patrick posted on X last week. “Most parents, students, and Aggie alumni expect Texas A&M to reflect the values of our state and our nation as well as A&M’s rich history. If President Welsh will not or cannot reflect those values, then change needs to happen.”
Read all about it at The Texas Tribune.
Ivermectin goes on Sale OTC Dec. 4
Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday signed a bill makes ivermectin — a drug used mostly in this country to treat livestock for parasites — available to Texans without a prescription.
Texas is now the fifth state to approve the over-the-counter sale of the drug after it became popular as an unproven treatment for COVID-19. House Bill 25 filed by state Rep. Joanne Shofner, R-Nacogdoches, first passed the House, 87-47, after an energetic, three-hour debate along party lines. Shofner, surrounded by more than 20 Republicans at one point, argued her bill was championing medical freedom, giving Texans better access to a drug particularly outside cities where pharmacies outnumber physicians.
Shofner’s bill does not put ivermectin on pharmacy shelves, but the drug would be available upon request from behind the pharmacist’s counter as Texans already do for other drugs, like Sudafed. The law takes effect Dec. 4.
Read more at The Texas Tribune.
Border Healthcare Providers Bracing for Future Hardships
Starr County, a largely rural, Hispanic community on the southern U.S. border, made headlines in 2024 when it voted Republican in a presidential election for the first time in more than a century. Immigration and the economy drove the flip in this community, where roughly a third of the population falls below the poverty line
Now, recent actions by the Trump administration and the GOP-controlled Congress have triggered a new concern: the inability of doctors, hospitals, and other health providers to continue to care for uninsured patients. It’s a fear not only in Starr County, which has one of the highest uninsured rates in the nation. Communities across the U.S. with similarly high proportions of uninsured people could struggle as additional residents lose health coverage.
