Mike Hixenbaugh

Abbott sues to remove Houston lawmaker for leading redistricting quorum break The lawsuit alleges Gene Wu forfeited his office when he led the Democratic House caucus in fleeing the state over redistricting.

Donald Trump is demanding that Republicans be granted more seats in Congress without having to win more votes.

To make it happen, the governor of Texas is seeking to remove a democratically elected political opponent from office in order to replace him with someone of his choosing.

bsky.app/profile/jenr...

The Republican governor of Texas has directed state police to arrest his Democratic opponents

How a Christian college ministry glorified a sex offender and enabled him to keep abusing students Daniel Savala urged generations of Chi Alpha members to get naked in his Houston sauna. Why did Assemblies of God pastors keep bringing teenagers to his home?

Assemblies of God leaders knew that Daniel Savala was a convicted sex offender.

But for years, pastors kept bringing teenage boys to learn from “the holiest man alive” in his backyard sauna.

Here’s the latest from our series investigating sex abuse in the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination.

NOTABLY the Paxton opinion that Abbott cites doesn’t actually say lawmakers who break quorum are removable — in fact it says this is a fact-specific question only resolvable by a court.

The opinion also does not say it’s unconstitutional to break quorum.
www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/defaul...

Yes, but this raises big questions about what it means to be a patriot

Who can say which is right?

Employees may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature — OPM Director Scott Kupor

Is it harassing to tell a coworker they are going to burn in hell for all eternity?

“This is the only religious text that will be permitted to be displayed in Frisco ISD classrooms”

No formula, no food: Mothers and babies starve together in Gaza Doctors, aid groups and Palestinians say the long-running hunger crisis has reached a tipping point, with deaths from malnutrition surging.

Israeli authorities are restricting the entry of aid, including formula, and babies are starving:

“At 11 months old, Sela should weigh around 20 pounds, but weighs only 8. Her thin limbs wiggled listlessly, and her small hand could barely grasp the finger of the nurse tending to her.”

Severe malnutrition among under-5s in Gaza City has tripled in two weeks, charity says MSF says number of people needing care for malnutrition has quadrupled since May and blames Israeli ‘policy of starvation’ * Middle East crisis – live updates The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said that rates of severe malnutrition among children under five at its Gaza City clinic have tripled in the last two weeks as starvation in the Israeli-besieged strip worsens. The global aid community has sounded the alarm as Gaza descends deeper into mass starvation, with daily deaths from starvation reported as Israel allows only a trickle of aid into the territory. Continue reading...

Severe malnutrition among under-5s in Gaza City has tripled in two weeks, charity says

Under Siege From Trump and Musk, a Top Liberal Group Falls Into Crisis

Between Musk & the Trump administration, Media Matters has been squeezed to the brink. In settlement discussions, lawyers for X demanded the organization hand over all its cash and shut down — all because MM reported ads appeared on X next to antisemitic content. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/25/u...

Gazans Are Dying of Starvation

My overwhelming memory from Hebrew school is being young and seeing images of ancestors starving in the camps. “Never again” was our religion. Here is the paper of record today. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/24/w...

wow!

Suitcase full of H-E-B tortillas and coffee

When in Texas

Bring back the Furniture Makers

Hearst to purchase Dallas Morning News Hearst has expanded its foothold in Texas, and the Dallas purchase means it now owns newspapers in the state’s four largest cities.

Hearst conquered Texas www.houstonchronicle.com/business/art...

"How many people unnecessarily died because of DEl? Well, you can rest easy because they say diversity is our strength, and now those little girls are dead," Kirk said. "Those families are without their daughters, but hey, you have a Black fire chief in Austin, you should be happy about that."

Charlie Kirk had to look to a city three hours east of the flooding to find a Black man to blame for the catastrophe in Kerr County.

You can read the rest of his racist screed here: www.chron.com/politics/art...

Attorney general: ‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ sign cannot be displayed in Idaho schools The sign violates a new law that prohibits the display of flags or banners have a political viewpoint, according to an Idaho attorney general’s office opinion obtained by EdNews through a pub…

Idaho Attorney General: ‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ sign cannot be displayed in Idaho schools because they are “part of an ideological/social movement.” www.idahoednews.org/top-news/att...

A Doctor Challenged the Opinion of a Powerful Child Abuse Specialist. Then He Lost His Job. A Minneapolis pediatrician said he felt pressured to “fall in line” with child abuse specialist Dr. Nancy Harper and her team. Then he was given a choice: resign or be fired.

A year ago, I got a tip from a source: there was an influential child abuse pediatrician in Minneapolis whose judgment on diagnoses of child abuse had been called into question: Dr. Nancy Harper. So I started digging… 🧵 www.propublica.org/article/chil...

Jimmy Swaggart, Passionate Televangelist Ousted by Scandal, Dies at 90

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/u...

NY Times obit writer took a swing on this one

An ER doctor was charged with abusing his baby. But 15 medical experts say there's no proof. After a physician worried he’d hurt his baby, his own hospital reported abuse. Now fellow doctors are raising concerns about an “out of control” system.

The same child abuse doctor in @jlussenhop.bsky.social’s story consulted on this case that I wrote about in 2020, weighing in with total certainty that a baby was the victim of abuse based on her read of medical records.
www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncn...

Do No Harm: A Devastating Diagnosis Doctors trained to spot child abuse can save lives. But when they get it wrong, families are torn apart, NBC News and the Houston Chronicle found in an investigation.

I spent a year investigating this subject with @keribla.bsky.social back in 2019. We found a pattern of child abuse pediatricians overstating their ability to look at scans of a child’s injuries and state with 100% certainty what — or even who — caused them.

A Doctor Challenged the Opinion of a Powerful Child Abuse Specialist. Then He Lost His Job. A Minneapolis pediatrician said he felt pressured to “fall in line” with child abuse specialist Dr. Nancy Harper and her team. Then he was given a choice: resign or be fired.

“She’s very black and white, right and wrong, no gray area,” he said, “which is not the way to do medicine.”

An important @propublica.org story showing how a false sense of certainty by child abuse pediatricians leads CPS to take children from parents based on shaky and oftentimes disputed evidence

They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms [Hixenbaugh, Mike] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms

Anyway, this is now out in paperback, remaining as relevant as ever: www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0063...

Supreme Court backs parents seeking to opt their kids out of LGBTQ books in elementary schools Parents sued Montgomery County, Maryland, schools after it said they couldn't opt their children out of exposure to LGBTQ books in the classroom.

Sotomayor: "The result will be chaos for this nation's public schools … Given the great diversity of religious beliefs in this country, countless interactions that occur every day in public schools might expose children to messages that conflict with a parents' beliefs.”

A White Nationalist Wrote a Law School Paper Promoting Racist Views. It Won Him an Award.

“I just find it fascinating that this student can write [a racist] article, a series of [racist] articles that are essentially manifestoes, and that’s free speech,” Ms. Chatman said, “but my class can’t be called ‘Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality.’”

‘They’re Taking Shirly': An Army Sergeant Thought His Family Was Safe. Then ICE Deported His Wife Immigrant family members of military troops have no guaranteed path to citizenship and face deportation if undocumented.

ICE lured the spouse of an active duty Army solider out of her workplace near Houston by lying and saying her car had been damaged, then snatched her up and detained her for three months before deporting her to Honduras without her husband and young child thewarhorse.org/military-fam...

This attribution made me lol

ICE officer justifying the arrest of an undocumented immigrant with no criminal record: “Although … he hasn’t committed a crime, that doesn’t mean he can’t potentially commit a crime.”