TEXAS TODAY
The Texas Tribune brought its considerable reporting power to San Angelo, as Alex Nguyen and Lindsey Byman investigated policy changes the faculty at Angelo State University were confronted with this week.
Faculty say they are being compelled to conform to a policy that essentially works to make LGBT+ existence on campus invisible and undiscussable.
Nguyen and Byman write: Angelo State University officials have told professors not to discuss transgender and nonbinary identities in their courses, according to interviews with faculty members and several emails a professor provided to The Texas Tribune. This move makes it the first known public Texas university to largely restrict classroom acknowledgement of such gender identities, heightening concerns about threats to academic freedom across the state.
The Tribune spoke with faculty who were willing to go on the record, and some who requested anonymity, and they spoke with the professional organization of professors.
Academic freedom and civil rights groups have pushed back against the justification for ASU’s restrictions, saying the federal executive order and the governor’s directive don’t constitute law while HB 229 does not explicitly mention higher education. They called the university’s directives overreach that undermines academic freedom and erases trans campus members.
“It’s such a blatant violation of First Amendment and academic freedom rights,” said Brian Evans, president of the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors. “There was no process. This just happened out of nowhere.”
Read the whole Texas Tribune article here.
Some Texas Counties Struggling to Keep Up with Voter Registrations
According to reporting from VOTEBEAT, several counties in the state are finding it difficult to to
The Texas Secretary of State’s “once-in-a-decade upgrade” of the imperfect TEAM voter registration system made things worse, and elections officials across the state have made their frustrations known.
Natalia Contreras writes: Interviews, private conversations, and emails, county elections officials from across the state point the finger at the state’s voter registration system, known as TEAM, which has long had functionality problems. They say that after the software was overhauled in July, the problems began proliferating: Voters’ previous addresses override their new ones, their voting precincts don’t populate correctly, and sometimes the registration information doesn’t save at all.
Adkins told election officials this month that many of the problems stem from county officials not knowing how to use the updated system.
You can read that story on the Texas Tribune as well.
- The deadline to register to vote in the Nov. 4 constitutional amendment election is Oct. 6.
- Check your voter registration status at VoteTexas.gov or contact the Elections Office at 325-659-6541
- If you’ve registered to vote but your name isn’t on the voter rolls at the polling place, ask to cast a provisional ballot.
- By law, election officials are required to investigate why your name doesn’t appear in the system and will inform you after Election Day whether your provisional ballot was counted.
Camp Mystic parents condemn reopening plans
The parents of the last missing girl from Camp Mystic, the Christian girls’ camp where 25 young campers and two counselors died during the July 4 flooding, blasted its recent decision to reopen one of its campsites in 2026 in a letter made public on Thursday.
“To promote reopening less than three months after the tragedy — while one camper remains missing — is unthinkable,” wrote CiCi and Will Steward, whose 8-year-old daughter Cile Steward has not been found. “Our families remain trapped in the deepest throes of grief, yet your communications treat our never-ending nightmare as little more than a brief pause before resuming business as usual.”
Read the Texas Tribune story here.
____FROM THE TEXAS OBSERVER____
Trump Administration Conspiring to Pay Low-Wage Workers Less
For $8 an hour, B.O., a Kenyan immigrant who asked the Texas Observer to use only her initials for fear of workplace retaliation, once cared for six elderly patients in a Houston group home for as many as 90 hours a week—without any overtime pay. Every day from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m., she fed, bathed, monitored, and administered medication to the patients. If no dayshift worker arrived to relieve her, she said, she continued working through the next day and night. Her wages were so low that she got a second job cleaning homes.
Over time, B.O., who’s employed in an industry that’s notorious for exploiting women of color and immigrants, learned to protect herself. She now tries to secure a contract before starting work, to refuse extra duties, and to demand better wages and overtime pay. She’s even organized other domestic workers.
“It takes a toll on you,” she said. “By the time you try to get a nap, you have to start going back to work again. … You can’t do anything else because you’re so tired.”
Texas has 315,000 home health and personal care aides—the nation’s third-highest number, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). And in 2024, those Texans earned an average hourly wage of only $11.29, the second-lowest average wage earned by domestic workers among all 50 states. Another 109,000 Texans work as housekeepers and childcare workers.
____FROM THE ASSOCIATED PRESS____
Texas Man Convicted of Killing 13-Month-Old During ‘Exorcism’ Executed
HUNTSVILLE (AP) — A Texas man was executed Thursday for killing his girlfriend’s 13-month-old daughter in a torturous ordeal the couple said was part of an “exorcism” to expel a demon from the child’s body.
Blaine Milam, 35, was pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the December 2008 death of Amora Carson at his trailer in Rusk County in East Texas.
In a final statement, Milam thanked supporters as well as the prison chaplaincy for opening its faith-based programs to death row inmates.
“If any of you would like to see me again, I implore all of you no matter who you are to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and we will meet again,” he said from the death chamber gurney. “I love you all. Bring me home, Jesus.”
As the lethal dose of sedative pentobarbital began flowing into his right hand and left arm, at 6:19 p.m. CDT, Milam grunted and gasped once, then began snoring quietly. After about two minutes, all sounds and movement stopped. Minutes later, he was declared dead.
It was one of two executions carried out Thursday evening in the U.S. Geoffrey West was put to death in Alabama with nitrogen gas for fatally shooting a gas station employee during a 1997 robbery. The two executions brought the year’s total to 33 death sentences carried out nationwide.
