Excerpts from The Texas Tribune’s The Brief on Texas Politics and Policy
BEST OF THE TRIB
The Texas Education Agency announced Thursday a set of school safety proposals that would require public schools to install silent panic alarms, automatic locks on exterior doors and other changes to bolster security. The education department will open up the proposed changes to public comment before the end of the year and start rolling them out in 2023 if they’re approved — with $400 million allocated by the state to support the cost of the improvements at the district level.
On Sunday, The Texas Tribune and ProPublica published an investigation into apparent violations of the Johnson Amendment on the part of churches. The investigation was supplemented this morning with 20 instances of apparent violations from churches across the country that were reviewed by tax law experts who said they violate the law. The Johnson Amendment, a part of the IRS tax code that prohibits nonprofits (including churches) from involvement in political campaigns, was proposed in 1954 by then-U.S. Sen. Lyndon Johnson of Texas and was considered uncontroversial at the time, passing with bipartisan support before being signed into law by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.
The Texas Tribune will host a Nov. 17-18 event in Lubbock to examine the issues affecting rural Texas, including broadband access, economic development, education and welfare. Despite rural Texas’ importance to the state economy — generating $21.2 billion in 2019 according to the Texas Almanac — rural life is becoming increasingly difficult in Texas.
Whole Woman’s Health, owners of the last abortion clinic in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, says it was duped by a shell buyer into selling the building that housed its McAllen location for almost two decades to an anti-abortion group. Within two weeks of buying the building, Peruvian Alliance, a local business group of doctors, resold the building to the anti-abortion McAllen Pregnancy Center, which will turn it into a crisis pregnancy center, an anti-abortion establishment that resembles an actual abortion clinic.
U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Houston said on his podcast that fellow Republicans willingly admit behind closed doors that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen. His rebuke against election deniers in the GOP was his strongest one yet, highlighting the possibility that it would lead voters to lose faith in the electoral process.
State Rep. John Lujan is trying to pull off an elusive feat: serving in a Texas legislative session. He’s won two special election upsets in the past but not a full term that would allow him to participate during the session. After his San Antonio district was redrawn, he finds himself in the strongest position yet to make that happen against Democratic opponent Frank Ramirez.
State Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, announced that he’s running for speaker of the Texas House. Positioning himself further right than his GOP peers, Tinderholt is running against fellow Republican Dade Phelan based on his opposition to having Democratic committee chairs in the House.
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