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POSSIBLE TOPICS: FIRST, A COMMENTARY: Thoughts on changes in the Democratic Presidential Ticket; Public input needed for Addicks and Barker Master Plan revision; Pearland City Council approves city’s first-ever master plan for cultural arts; George R. Brown Convention Center to expand with purchase of new land; ‘Do we even need the school?’ Houston students aren’t staying in the classroom post-pandemic; 51 Texas school districts are not complying with state ban on hairstyle discrimination, ACLU says; Texas attorney general can’t question Catholic Charities director over migrant services, court says; What Happened to Digital Resilience?; US to take ‘hard look’ at fighter project, top official says; Exclusive: US-Japan Patriot missile production plan hits Boeing component roadblock; Trump says Taiwan should pay US for defence: ‘they took about 100% of our chip business’; Front-line NATO allies are facing an unconventional Russian threat short of war but still quite dangerous; 

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. 

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:

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Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

1. ELECTION INFO: Be correctly registered for the fall General elections.
2. FIRST, A COMMENTARY: Thoughts on changes in the Democratic Presidential Ticket. TAGS: President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic Presidential Ticket,
   1. As regular followers of this program may know, I generally avoid discussing stories that have saturated the public media unless I feel there’s something I can contribute to the discourse.
   2. In my humble opinion, in declining to follow his ego and his heart, Biden has made a decision akin to George Washington’s not to seek another term in office. This was a hard choice made for the good and for the future of the nation as Biden sees it. But you may have already heard remarks to that effect in some places.
   3. When the cries for Biden to step aside became too loud to ignore, I began to have flashbacks to the Democratic Party and convention of 1968, and I feared for our country. At that time, having already been challenged in the primaries by Robert F Kennedy and others, and for reasons of politics and health, Lyndon Johnson decided not to seek another term as president. With the assassination of Kennedy, the most likely nominee to arise from the process, the Democrats fragmented as a party and the convention resulted in chaos.
   4. The nomination went to Johnson’s Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was an unpopular choice, carrying the baggage from Johnson’s unpopular prosecution of the Vietnam War. Party support was lukewarm, and voters ultimately chose to vote for Richard Nixon. The result, as they say, is history.
   5. Add to this scenario that the Democrats are again, next month, having their convention in Chicago, and I was terrified that history would rhyme.
   6. To my mind, Vice President Kamala Harris had always been the backup president. I thought that it had been understood when Biden ran and was elected as a 77-year-old that, actuarially speaking, there was perhaps an even chance that Kamala would end up becoming president for one reason or another.
   7. At the time, I had even suggested that Biden might step aside at the end of his third year as president in favor of Kamala so that she could run in 2024 as an incumbent.
   8. But now that things have shaped up as they have, how am I feeling about Democratic election prospects?
   9. In that vein, I thought I’d tell you about a discussion I had with my 30-something son-in-law over dinner on Tuesday night.
   10. Admittedly, you can’t get a more microcosmic sample than one person, but I thought this was interesting. He said that whether or not Biden had run, he’d have voted Democratic in the presidential election, but without much enthusiasm. But he found the prospect of voting for Kamala and whomever she might choose for a running mate as much more exciting.
   11. I think that there are various reasons for this. Kamala is almost a whole generation younger than Biden, which might make younger people see her as much more attuned to political and social issues as younger generations see them. Further, she certainly exudes a physical and emotional energy that Biden, whether due to his age, personality, gender, or generation, simply doesn’t embody.
   12. Biden has been an amazingly successful president against significant political odds, but like Harry Truman, it might require the relatively dispassionate perspective of history and historians to give him the credit he deserves for his accomplishments.
   13. Be that as it may, I’ve said many times on this show that by 2024 or 2028, there will have been a generational transition to the leadership of this country unlike anything we’ve seen since 1992. Until that election, which Bill Clinton won, the nation had been governed almost exclusively by the generation that had experienced World War 2. Clinton was the first of the Baby Boomers to be elected president, and it was a signifier that new life experiences and perspectives would be governing the US from that time forward.
   14. Thirty-two years later, that kind of generational shift is upon us again.
   15. Author Jack McDevitt once said that civilization advances one funeral at a time. Morbid, but true. Even the most wise and mentally flexible among us must yield over time to those who follow, waiting with various degrees of eagerness for us to get out of their way so they can have their turn. That time is upon us.
   16. Along this same line of thought, I’m adding a reference link to an article from The Guardian, entitled …
   17. REFERENCE: ‘I was not voting before, now I am’: gen Z voters on what they think of Kamala Harris; Young US voters weigh in on why they like or dislike the VP as a candidate and if they think she could beat Trump. — By Jedidajah Otte | THEGUARDIAN.COM | Wed 24 Jul 2024 07.00 EDT
3. Public input needed for Addicks and Barker Master Plan revision; By Aubrey Vogel | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 2:05 PM Jul 24, 2024 CDT / Updated 2:05 PM Jul 24, 2024 CDT. TAGS: Addicks and Barker reservoirs, S. Army Corps of Engineers, Flood Control,
   1. The S. Army Corps of Engineers is seeking public comments for suggestions on a revised master plan for the Addicks and Barker reservoirs.
   2. The Addicks and Barker reservoirs, located in the Katy-area, were constructed in the 1940s to control downstream flooding in the Houston area and the Houston Ship Channel. The reservoirs are owned by the federal government and operated by the Corps, Community Impact
   3. The master plan acts as a 25-year comprehensive land-use guide for the reservoirs with the purpose of: Providing long-term goals and management objectives; Adhering to federal laws for preservation, conservation, restoration, management and development; [and] Providing adaptable land classifications.
   4. The last plan was completed in August 2009 but is out of date and no longer compliant with existing regulations, according to a master plan presentation.
   5. The master plan provides guidance to the Corps when making management decisions related to the reservoirs, including environmental, cultural and recreational opportunities, the 2009 plan states.
   6. According to the presentation, the master plan doesn’t include facility design details, daily project administration details, flowage easement land management or the technical aspects of: Flood risk water management; Regional water quality; Dam operations; Water releases; [and] Dam safety.
   7. Ahead of the draft of the master plan revision, residents are encouraged to submit written suggestions via a comment form with recommended changes, including but not limited to: Changing land classifications; Changing resource goals and objectives; [and] Creating utility corridors.
   8. According to comment form documents, feedback opened July 10 and is due by close of business on Aug. 9. Individuals can submit comments by: Emailing the comment form to ceswg-addicksandbarkermp@usace.army.mil; [or] Mailing the comment form to 1011 Hwy. 6 S., Ste. 101, Houston, TX 77077 at the attention of David Mackintosh
   9. For additional questions, community members are encouraged to call the Addicks Barker Office at 281-752-2600 or email ceswg-addicksandbarkermp@usace.army.mil.
   10. Ahead of the public comment opening, the Corps [has scheduled a] public meeting … hosted Aug. 19 at Trini Mendenhall Community Center at 1414 Wirt Road, Houston, from 4-6 p.m. Following this, another 30 day comment period will commence, Public Affairs Deputy Chief Carlos Gomez said in an email. …
   11. MIKE: There is a little more detail in the original article, which I have linked to.
   12. MIKE: There are links within the story to information and contacts. I’ve singled out a couple of different links for those who want a quick overview.
   13. MIKE: As near as I can discern, this revision to the Master Plan doesn’t include any new land acquisition for the dams. Rather, it appears to be a reconsideration of how land use in and around the dams will be viewed and allocated.
   14. MIKE: For those who have an interest or a stake in this process, there are ample means of contributing to it.
   15. REFERENCE: Addicks and Barker Master Plan – Active Documents (note: if you can’t expand a category, there are no associated documents) — SWG.USACE.ARMY.MIL
   16. REFERENCE: ADDICKS AND BARKER MASTER PLAN REVISION, Public Involvement Presentation, July 10, 2024 —USACE.ARMY.MIL
4. Pearland City Council approves city’s first-ever master plan for cultural arts; By James T. Norman | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 5:32 PM Jul 23, 2024 CDT / Updated 9:19 AM Jul 24, 2024 CDT. TAGS: Pearland City Council, Cultural Arts,
   1. After more than a year of development, Pearland City Council approved the city’s first master plan for cultural arts.
   2. The plan lays out five key goals, as well as details and tactics to help carry out each goal, according to the master plan. The goals are: Bring in staff and overhead, such as with training and sponsorships, needed to carry out the program; Build and expand the city’s public art program; Expand cultural tourism within the city; Add cultural places, including a cultural district in Pearland’s Old Town; [and] Expand arts and cultural offerings for residents.
   3. As part of that, the plan calls for creating and hiring an arts administrator and a part-time public art manager, according to the plan.
   4. It also offers a path to help fund the various art upgrades, namely through hotel occupancy taxes and various types of grants. However, the plan also leaves open a chance to receive city funds through the general fund, but Tracy Rohrbacher, executive director for the Pearland Convention and Visitors Bureau, clarified in a July 24 email the general fund comes with constraints, and the plan was designed to mostly use H.O.T. funds.
   5. Officials said they hope the plan will bring several benefits to the city, including: Increase hotel stays and hotel occupancy tax revenue; Focus on Pearland’s cultural scene; Enhance the city’s music and restaurant scene; Advise on public art; [and] Help fund projects.
   6. Much of the discussion at the city’s meeting was about the public art aspect of it, namely how to best encourage and handle the city’s Pear-Scape Trail, which features fiberglass pear sculptures painted by local artists.
   7. Some, such as council member Joseph Koza, said they wanted the master plan to be more inclusive in who could sponsor such a pear. Others, such as council member Chad Thumann, suggested maybe hosting an art contest between residents or schools.
   8. As a result, City Council voted to reword a clause that called for setting a limit on new Pear-Scape installations to help open up the possibility to more people in the community. …
   9. The plan also calls for hiring an arts administrator, which was something council member Rushi Patel did not support. Despite this, other officials believed specialized staff was needed to carry out the plan.
   10. The planning process … began in summer 2023 when stakeholders in the community first met to discuss it. Following that, officials held meetings and carried out community surveys, which netted more than 1,700 responses, according to city documents.
   11. More recently, the Pearland Convention and Visitors Bureau Advisory Board voted 4-0 in May to support a recommended version of the plan, according to city documents. That plan was presented to City Council later that same month in a workshop.
   12. Mayor Kevin Cole said when he first did a listening tour on this topic three years ago, he found that above all else, the city needed direction.
   13. “We needed to move the whole cultural arts community in a direction,” Cole said. “Everyone was kind of doing their own thing. … It gave us the opportunity to sit down and listen and understand where and how we need to move forward.”
   14. MIKE: I think it’s interesting how population growth in the smaller cities surrounding Houston in the greater metro area are starting to do some significant social and cultural evolution along with the evolving nature of their populations and perspectives.
   15. MIKE: Of course, these changes are often put forward and justified with the economic potential of tourism and other aspects, but that’s okay.
   16. MIKE: I’m not going to say that this equals doing the right thing for the wrong reasons because there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making money, building businesses, and creating jobs. And if that’s part of a plan to enrich cultural and artistic life for a community, that’s just fine. It’s a win-win.
5. George R. Brown Convention Center to expand with purchase of new land; By Cassandra Jenkins | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 3:19 PM Jul 24, 2024 CDT / Updated 3:19 PM Jul 24, 2024 CDT. TAGS: George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston City Council,
   1. Houston City Council approved an ordinance July 24 to purchase a plot of land in downtown Houston to expand the George R. Brown Convention Center.
   2. Council members unanimously approved the acquisition July 24 based on a proposal from the Houston First Corporation. Houston First manages the city’s entertainment venues, including the George R. Brown Convention Center.
   3. According to the agenda item, the land is intended to be used to construct a new building that could include parking, exhibition halls, ballrooms and/or meeting spaces.
   4. The parcel of land spans two downtown city blocks [described in the article] between the convention center and the Toyota Center. Both sites are currently the location of two privately-owned, ground-level parking lots.
   5. A representative of Houston First said the corporation hopes to negotiate the purchase and price of the property directly with the owners of the two blocks. According to the agenda packet, the company would be authorized to use eminent domain to acquire the land for the project, if needed.
   6. Eminent domain, according to The Institute for Justice, gives the government the power to take private property without consent for public use.
   7. The proposed expansion of the George R. Brown Convention Center is the result of Senate Bill 1057 …
   8. B. 1057 authorized local government corporations to collect a portion of hotel-occupancy taxes in excess of the amount collected in 2023 for up to 30 years. The bipartisan bill was authored by former state Sen. John Whitmire, who is now the mayor of Houston.
   9. The revenue collected from the new tax will provide approximately $2 billion in funding, according to the state comptroller’s office, which the city can use to expand and improve the convention center as well as other downtown attractions.
   10. Houston First said in a statement the corporation is still in the planning stages and does not have specific details on what the expansion project will look like yet.
   11. [A spokesperson for the corporation said,] “Houston First looks forward to beginning work on the previously announced transformation of the George R. Brown Convention Center and surrounding convention and entertainment district. The agenda item before council is a critical step to commencing this project, which will ultimately mean billions of dollars of economic impact in the years ahead.”
   12. More information is expected to be released on the project in late 2024 with a ground breaking anticipated for 2025.
   13. MIKE: There’s really nothing I can contribute to this story, but I thought it was of interest to listeners and residents of Houston.
6. ‘Do we even need the school?’ Houston students aren’t staying in the classroom post-pandemic; by Miranda Dunlap | HOUSTONLANDING.ORG | July 24, 2024 | 1:47 pm. TAGS: Clear Creek ISD, School Attendance,
   1. From purchasing alarm clocks, donating Uber gift cards, showing up on families’ doorsteps and even attempting to help parents plan their vacations, Clear Creek ISD employees are exhausting their options to get students to show up to school. 
   2. In the roughly 40,000-student district southeast of Houston, 17 percent of students were considered “chronically absent” during the 2022-23 school year – meaning they missed at least 18 school days. That’s [nearly doubled] from five years ago.
   3. The issue is not unique to Clear Creek ISD. Mirroring a nationwide, persistent trend, rates of chronically absent Houston-area students exploded after the pandemic. It’s a phenomenon that leaves many wondering why kids aren’t coming to school like they used to – and what it will take to fix that. 
   4. Houston’s other largest districts did not make administrators available for an interview for this story.
   5. School leaders and education experts say high absenteeism has devastating ripple effects on students’ academic performance, school district funding, and society’s overall perceived importance of the classroom. Yet there is no clear solution, causing schools to scramble to improve attendance habits. 
   6. “There did become the feeling of, ‘Is schooling optional?’” said Holly Hughes, Clear Creek ISD’s assistant superintendent of elementary education. “We know that the habits start in pre-K, in our earliest years, with parents understanding the value and the intention. It’s a lot to get our students to school in the morning.”
   7. When schools returned in-person after the pandemic sent classes online, most large Houston districts saw their chronic absenteeism rates double. Those rates decreased in the 2022-23 school year — the most recently available state data — but still remain much higher than pre-pandemic levels. 
   8. The pandemic shattered the routine of going to school each morning, and once students returned, the lingering option of remote learning was largely seen as an acceptable alternative for when students don’t show up in person.
   9. “People became comfortable staying home and not going to school, where they could dial in or not dial in,” said Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators. “There wasn’t anybody there to enforce that.”
   10. That’s created an issue larger than anyone knows how to fix, let alone any one district, says Joshua Childs, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education. To him, it signals to him a shift in the culture of American schooling. 
   11. “At this moment, we are wrestling, as a country, as a state, in terms of what we value when it comes to educating the kids under the age of 18,” Childs said. “Like, what’s the value of education, and what’s the purpose of the school itself? And do we even need the school?”
   12. School leaders and education experts agree that a student’s attendance has major impacts on their academic achievement. The Texas Education Agency warns that chronically absent students are more likely to perform poorly on standardized tests, and they’re less likely to attend or complete college. 
   13. In a late June State Board of Education meeting, TEA commissioner Mike Morath hypothesized that increased absences could be a reason why student math scores are declining across Texas.
   14. “Our broad hypothesis of this is that Covid caused much higher absenteeism from instruction, and as a result, much more mathematics gaps,” Morath said. “The linear nature of mathematics as a discipline is such that if a student misses little chunks of that discipline along the way, that may or may not cause them immediate problems, but it will certainly, at some point in time, prevent them from achieving higher levels of mathematics.”
   15. But the problem lies in getting students and families to understand these stakes. 
   16. “One of the things that the pandemic … maybe raised more questions around, is, ‘What’s actually the purpose of schooling? If I can do it through my phone. I can learn through TikTok. I can learn through using technology in different ways, and arriving in a building every single day may not be what’s best for my kids or myself,’” Childs said. “It has big impacts, as far as academic outcomes, employment, post-secondary opportunities, social, mental, physical health outcomes. All of that is impacted based on a child’s attendance.”
   17. Chronic absenteeism affects students across different demographics – campus-level data shows that in some Houston districts, schools in both affluent and underserved communities post similarly high rates of absenteeism.
   18. Students in underserved areas may miss school because they lack necessities like transportation, or because they have a job to support their families. Meanwhile, students from more affluent families may miss class to take regular vacations or visit colleges. Across the board, it’s easier to keep kids at home because parents are increasingly able to work remotely.
   19. With no simple root cause, there’s no crystal-clear solution to keeping kids in the classroom. 
   20. Hughes, the Clear Creek administrator, said she found it isn’t as simple as providing more “wraparound” resources such as clothing and transportation. They’ve had to urge families to schedule doctor appointments and college visits on staff professional development days, supply suggested dates for vacations, and try to communicate the overall importance of the in-person school routine. …
   21. Brown said declining attendance is a circular issue – the more kids miss school, the less money districts have to rectify low attendance. 
   22. The Texas government funds schools based on their average daily attendance, meaning total attendance counts for the year are divided by the number of instructional days to produce the number of students a district is funded for. 
   23. Proponents of attendance-based funding say it provides incentive for improving attendance, while critics have long argued it more heavily penalizes schools with students dealing with socioeconomic factors that drive absenteeism. 
   24. Many school districts across Texas have outlined multimillion-dollar budget deficits this year, and several Houston-area school boards have pointed to declining attendance rates as a factor contributing to their financial woes. …
   25. MIKE: After reading this story and thinking about it, I began to wonder if school administrators and state funding guidelines requiring physical attendance might not be a problem of thinking about this problem in the form of an old paradigm.
   26. MIKE: Back in an early Covid-era show around March of 2020, Andrew Ferguson and I discussed what we believed would be permanent changes wrought on society as a result of Covid, and that these changes would be further enabled by changes in technologies, and from changed social and cultural expectations.
   27. MIKE: I think that this story exemplifies one of those changes: The ability and expectation of being able to conduct remote work and remote schooling.
   28. MIKE: For parents and kids, this can mean a relaxation of the frantic routine of getting up extra early to get kids dressed and ready for school, and then either getting them to a school bus or physically driving their kids to one of more schools, depending on grade levels. The ability to learn remotely can have real, immediately-tangible benefits to families.
   29. MIKE: What I see in this story is a stubborn refusal to accept this new remote paradigm and an insistence on trying to go back to expecting all student learning and attendance to be in person.
   30. MIKE: This persistence in trying to return to old ways is further incentivized by the State, which disburses money to school districts based on physical
   31. MIKE: Remote learning is certainly not perfect. Despite advances in remote attendance technology and methods of remote teaching, the process of remote instruction and the adjunct of remote learning certainly need improvement, and I think that this is where attention should be focused.
   32. MIKE: Physical school attendance has many advantages. It stimulates social learning, friendships, school pride, participation in physical and intellectual team sports and endeavors, and — perhaps most importantly — helps to break down the natural tribalism that evolves around ethnic, racial, and cultural differences.
   33. MIKE: In short, physical attendance and socialization at school helps to cultivate a more united social fabric that bridges all kinds of human divisions. This is good for communities and our nation as a whole.
   34. MIKE: And yet … It’s apparent that consciously or unconsciously, parents and students are increasingly “voting with their feet” — so to speak — to participate in a more mixed educational milieu that melds the hybrid advantages of both remote learning and physical school attendance.
   35. MIKE: I see this as requiring a change in both pedagogical mindsets and State financing rules that recognizes this new reality. Rather than fighting a futile battle against persistent post-pandemic change, school districts should work on embracing these new educational norms and working to improve their effectiveness.
   36. MIKE: State funding should allow for hybrid school schedules, with some days being for remote learning and some days having mandated physical attendance. This might translate into needing fewer school buildings, saving a considerable amount of money involving construction and maintenance.
   37. MIKE: This money should then be spent on improving technology for remote learning. This will involve developing better methods of teaching and attendance-taking, as well as developing better ways of assuring that students learning remotely maintain their mental attention to the materials being taught, and assuring that students can’t feign attention to course work while using a separate computer or smart phone for other distractions during class time.
   38. MIKE: Attention must also be paid to making certain that no student is left behind or otherwise disadvantaged for the lack of remote learning resources such as computer hardware and software, and high-speed internet access.
   39. MIKE: Instead of building or maintaining more schools, perhaps each student should be supplied with a dedicated school-only laptop computer. These machines would be returned to the district at the end of each school year, much like textbooks.
   40. MIKE: It might be noted that by providing these computers to students, the machines can also replace bulky and expensive textbooks, saving districts a lot of money. This would also allow for frequent updating of informational text as knowledge changes and grows, as well as ending the physical wear and tear and eventual obsolescence and decrepitude of old textbooks.
   41. MIKE: All of these thoughts, ideas, and suggestions are certainly only the tip of the iceberg in terms of how a new hybrid educational system might look in a few years, given real dedication to the mission at all levels of administration and government, but I think it points to a way to proceed.
   42. MIKE: I hope school officials begin to think about 21^st century education in new “outside the box” ways for the benefit of students, parents, teachers, administrators, and our national society-at-large.
   43. MIKE: I believe that that’s really the only way to solve school attendance and funding problems in the long term.
   44. REFERENCE: America’s biggest education experiment is happening in Houston. Could it change U.S. schools? — by Asher Lehrer-Small and Danya Pérez | HOUSTONLANDING.ORG | July 1, 2024 | 4:00 am
7. 51 Texas school districts are not complying with state ban on hairstyle discrimination, ACLU says; By Asad Jung | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | July 24, 2024. TAGS: Public education, Texas Legislature,
   1. The ACLU of Texas said Wednesday it found 51 school districts in violation of the Texas CROWN Act, which bans race-based hair discrimination, and urged them to update their dress code policies.
   2. The Texas CROWN Act prohibits schools, workplaces and housing authorities from discriminating against hairstyles historically associated with race such as dreadlocks, cornrows or afros. …
   3. The ACLU said it reviewed the dress code policies of every school district in Texas and sent letters to the 51 they found weren’t complying with the law. The ACLU said officials at one school district, Tolar ISD in North Texas, immediately responded to the letter Wednesday and said they intend to update their policies to comply with the CROWN Act ahead of the upcoming school year. It was not immediately known how other schools responded.
   4. The CROWN Act was signed into law last year after receiving overwhelming support from the Texas Legislature. Social justice advocate Adjoa B. Asamoah first pitched the legislation in 2018.
   5. In February, a Texas judge ruled that Barbers Hill ISD did not violate the CROWN Act when district officials punished a Black student for wearing his hair in long locs.
   6. Darryl George, a junior at Barbers Hill High School, had been [on] in-school suspension since August of last year because of his hairstyle. The months-long dispute came to a head when Judge Chap B. Cain Ⅲ ruled that Barber Hill ISD can enforce its dress code policy, which prohibits male students from wearing hair that exceeds a certain length.
   7. MIKE: I’m guessing that this story suggests that the ACLU isn’t finished trying to enforce this law with its original intent. We’ll see how this develops down the road.
8. Texas attorney general can’t question Catholic Charities director over migrant services, court says; By Berenice Garcia | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | July 24, 2024 / Updated: 14 hours ago. TAGS: Criminal justice, Immigration, State government, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
   1. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton cannot depose the leader of a McAllen migrant shelter, a Hidalgo County judge ruled Wednesday.
   2. District Judge Bobby Flores’ decision shuts down attempts to compel the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley to submit to questioning on the shelter’s operations.
   3. An attorney for Catholic Charities, William Powell, said he hoped the ruling put an end to the attorney general’s investigation into the organization’s work.
   4. “We would hope that at this point they’ve realized that Catholic Charities complies with the law in all the work they do,” Powell said. …
   5. The attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for an interview.
   6. The attorney general’s office filed a petition to depose Catholic Charities last month, saying it was investigating whether the organization is illegally harboring migrants or illegally encouraging them to enter or remain in the country.
   7. Catholic Charities, a nonprofit that provides food, shelter and other basic necessities to asylum seekers, people experiencing homelessness and others in need, said it has not violated any laws and the attorney general’s office has not presented any evidence to the contrary.
   8. The nonprofit has become one of the latest targets in Paxton’s efforts to shut down nonprofits that provide assistance to migrants.
   9. Earlier this month, an El Paso judge denied the attorney general’s efforts to shut down [another] migrant shelter network there on claims it was violating state law by helping people the state suspected of being undocumented immigrants. …
   10. Federal law also provides anyone who enters the country the right to request asylum. Migrants who cross the border in the Rio Grande Valley and have been allowed to remain in the country while awaiting an asylum hearing are delivered by U.S Customs and Border Protection to the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen.
   11. Catholic Charities argued that the attorney general’s office failed to show that there would be any benefit to the deposition.
   12. “The petition represents a fishing expedition into a pond where no one has even seen a fish,” attorneys for Catholic Charities wrote in their response to the attorney general’s petition. …
   13. MIKE: It was Mr. Bumble (in Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist”) who is often paraphrased as saying: “If that is the law, then the law is an ass.” If anyone ever puts a picture next to that quote, it should be of Ken Paxton’s mug shot.
   14. MIKE: It seems to me that Ken Paxton has limited motivations for his legal actions: Cruelty, meanness, and vindictiveness appear to be chief among them.
9. What Happened to Digital Resilience?; By David E. Sanger Reporting from Aspen, Colo.| NYTIMES.COM | Published July 19, 2024 / Updated July 20, 2024, 8:35 a.m. EDT. TAGS: S. Politics, National Security Agency, President Joe Biden, Russian Hackers, China Military Hackers,
   1. In the worst-case scenarios that the Biden administration has quietly simulated over the past year or so, Russian hackers working on behalf of Vladimir V. Putin bring down hospital systems across the United States. In others, China’s military hackers trigger chaos, shutting down water systems and electric grids to distract Americans from an invasion of Taiwan.
   2. As it turned out, none of those grim situations caused Friday’s national digital meltdown. It was, by all appearances, purely human error — a few bad keystrokes that demonstrated the fragility of a vast set of interconnected networks in which one mistake can cause a cascade of unintended consequences. Since no one really understands what is connected to what, it is no surprise that such episodes keep happening, each incident just a few degrees different from the last.
   3. Among Washington’s cyberwarriors, the first reaction on Friday morning was relief that this wasn’t a nation-state attack. For two years now, the White House, the Pentagon and the nation’s cyberdefenders have been trying to come to terms with Volt Typhoon, a particularly elusive form of malware that China has put into American critical infrastructure. It is hard to find, even harder to evict from vital computer networks and designed to sow far greater fear and chaos than the country saw on Friday.
   4. Yet as the “blue screen of death” popped up from the operating rooms of Massachusetts General Hospital to the airline management systems that keep planes flying, America got another reminder of the halting progress of cyber-resilience. It was a particularly bitter discovery then that a flawed update to a trusted tool in that effort — CrowdStrike’s software to find and neutralize cyberattacks — was the cause of the problem, not the savior.
   5. Only in recent years has the United States gotten serious about the problem. Government partnerships with private industry were put together to share lessons. The F.B.I. and the National Security Agency, along with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Homeland Security Department, issue bulletins outlining vulnerabilities or blowing the whistle on hackers.
   6. President Biden even created a Cyber Safety Review Board that looks at major incidents. It is modeled on the National Transportation Safety Board, which reviews airplane and train accidents, among other disasters, and publishes “lessons learned.”
   7. Just three months ago, it released a blistering account of how Microsoft allowed intrusions into its cloud services that permitted Chinese spies to clean out State Department files about Beijing and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo’s emails. But by the time the report came out, American officials were focused on a more urgent problem: the spread of ransomware attacks, many from Russia.
   8. It was the Russians, in fact, who woke up America about the vulnerability of the software supply chain problem that lets small errors ripple into large consequences.
   9. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential campaign, Moscow’s most skilled intelligence service bored into a component of that supply chain, worming its way into the update systems of software made by Solar Winds. The company’s products are intended to manage large computer networks, and the Russians knew that once they had access to the update system, they could spread a lot of malicious code fast.
   10. It worked. Hackers soon gained access to the Treasury and Commerce Departments, parts of the Pentagon and scores of America’s biggest companies. They did no visible damage. They did not trigger panics like the kinds seen on Friday. But they got the incoming administration’s attention. …
   11. … Anne Neuberger [is] the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, a job that did not exist until the Biden administration invented it. …
   12. [A] former senior official at the National Security Agency, [she] knows better than most that for now, there are no magic bullets. By the time an event like this happens, the only response is to mount a painstaking effort, step by step, to patch the error, push it out and try to wrench thousands of systems back online.
   13. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, … even the best of efforts to recover can fail. …
   14. Criminals will certainly be gleaning lessons from the CrowdStrike debacle, learning how to exploit the kinds of vulnerabilities that brought television stations and airports and insurance companies to a halt. So will Mr. Putin and President Xi Jinping of China, who now have, by accident, a more detailed road map for disruption, in an election year when they may well have an interest in interfering. …
   15. [Said Kent Walker, the president for global affairs at Google, at the Aspen forum,] “We are optimistic that A.I. is actually allowing us to make significant — not transformative yet, but significant — progress in being able to identify vulnerabilities, patch holes, improve the quality of coding,”
   16. But that will take a while. And in the meantime, unintended cascades of chaos will keep rippling around the globe — some, like Friday’s, a product of error. The fear is, in an election year, that the next digital meltdown may have a deeper political purpose.
   17. MIKE: There’s an old saying that to err is human, but to really screw up it takes a computer.
   18. MIKE: Whether the causes are relatively benign or entirely malevolent, computers are now so integral and embedded in almost every aspect of civilization that they can wreak havoc if there are even a few lines of bad code out of millions.
   19. MIKE: In 1999, NASA’s Mars Polar Lander was lost when it impacted the Martian surface. Investigation found that there was a conflict in the instructions confusing metric measurements with US measurements. This resulted in the lander thinking it had already touched down. Spoiler alert: It hadn’t. So the engines shut down and the mission crashed, and the crash was not a figure of speech like a computer crash.
   20. MIKE: I was interested in the final comment about using AI to find software errors and malware in computer code. Maybe Skynet won’t be so bad after all.
10. US to take ‘hard look’ at fighter project, top official says; By Tim Hepher | REUTERS.COM | July 20, 20245:14 PM CDT / Updated 8 min ago. TAGS: Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), F-22 replacement, Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA),
    1. The U.S. will closely dissect its plans for a Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform – a future family of fighters and drones – before deciding whether to go ahead, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said on Saturday.
    2. The cost of the future F-22 replacement has come under scrutiny after topping $300 million each, three times the cost of an F-35. But Kendall also highlighted evolving threats, in an apparent reference to [a] rapidly arming China.
    3. The idea of using drones or Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) will remain part of the proposed initiatives, he said.
    4. “Before we make the commitment that we are close to making, we want to make sure we have got the right design concept,” Kendall said at Britain’s Royal International Air Tattoo, the world’s largest military air show.
    5. “NGAD was conceived before a number of things: before the threat became so severe, before CCAs were introduced into the equation and before we had some issues with affordability that we are currently facing,” Kendall told reporters.
    6. “So we are going to take a hard look at NGAD before moving forward, but the family of systems which includes a crewed platform and CCAs and weapon systems and communications … is still very much the concept that we are pursuing”.
    7. The Air Force faces heavy costs for renewing its land-based nuclear deterrent and developing the B-21 bomber.
    8. “Before we commit to the 2026 budget, we want to be sure we are on the right path,” Kendall told reporters.
    9. Analysts attending the air show said the depth of the review suggested the Air Force wanted to refresh its view on whether NGAD remained well adapted to threats posed by China as its schedule slips into the 2030s.
    10. “NGAD is a whole series of programs under the umbrella of capabilities that the Air Force wants in order both to better deter China and to fight and win if necessary,” said Vago Muradian, editor of Defense & Aerospace Report.
    11. “The Chinese are changing how they’re going to fight. So the question that a budget-constrained Air Force is asking is whether [these] tens of billions of dollars is the right investment, or are there better ways of achieving some of these same aims”.
    12. Boeing and Lockheed Martin are widely seen as competing to win the core fighter part of the project.
    13. The rethink has captured attention in Europe where Britain’s crewed-uncrewed GCAP project, in partnership with Japan and Italy, may face scrutiny in an upcoming UK defence review, and France, Germany and Spain are working on the FCAS/SCAF project.
    14. Partners in GCAP are expected to give an update at the opening of the Farnborough International Airshow on Monday.
    15. MIKE: There is a saying attributed to the Soviets that quantity has a quality all its own.
    16. MIKE: The “Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)” platform, at $300 million per copy could pay for three highly capable F-35s, and that price tag doesn’t even include the cost of the so-called “loyal wingmen” unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that would use artificial intelligence and would be one of the most important components of the concept. These UAVs would be intended to greatly amplify the fighting capabilities of the proposed NGAD fighters.
    17. MIKE: Possibly, the final version of an NGAD fighter might work like a smaller version of an “Airborne early warning and control”, or AWACS, aircraft that could manage the equivalent of a small airwing without risking as many pilots or as many expensive manned aircraft. At least that’s my layman’s understanding of the basic concept.
    18. MIKE: I don’t know nearly enough to do the military math here, but whether these programs go forward as currently envisioned or not, I’m sure that much of the technology that’s being developed will find other uses, so the R&D money spent so far is not likely to be a total loss.
11. Exclusive: US-Japan Patriot missile production plan hits Boeing component roadblock; By Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly | REUTERS.COM | July 19, 2024 @ 9:00 PM CDT / Updated 19 hours ago. TAGS: Patriot Air Defense Missiles, Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), PAC-3 Missiles,
    1. A U.S. plan to use Japanese factories to boost production of Patriot air defence missiles – used by Ukraine to defend against Russian attacks – is being delayed by a shortage of a critical component manufactured by Boeing, four sources said.
    2. Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) already makes about 30 PAC-3 missiles each year under licence from defence contractor Lockheed Martin and can increase that number to about 60, two Japanese government officials and two industry sources told Reuters.
    3. The U.S. hopes to increase production from about 500 a year to more than 750 per year globally as soon as possible, a person familiar with the program said. But no expansion at all will be possible in Japan without additional supplies of the missiles’ seekers, which guide them in the final stages of flight, the officials and industry sources said.
    4. “It could take several years before MHI is able to raise output” because of the shortage, said one of the industry sources, who like the others declined to be identified because they are not authorised to speak to the media.
    5. The production snag in Japan shows the challenges Washington faces in plugging industrial help from its global allies into its complex supply chains.
    6. Boeing last year began expanding its seeker factory in the United States to increase production by 30%, although the additional lines won’t operate until 2027. …
    7. A Boeing representative referred questions to Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the interceptor.
    8. Lockheed Martin has said it is increasing its U.S. output of Patriot interceptors from 500 to 650 by 2027. Each costs about $4 million.
    9. Even if enough seekers are available, expanding annual PAC-3 production in Japan beyond 60 would require MHI to build more capacity.
    10. In its 2022 plan to double military spending, Japan’s government said it would offer financial help to defence companies that wanted to expand production. Those subsidies, however, only apply to equipment destined for the country’s Self Defense Forces and not exports.
    11. That means that MHI or the United States would have to stump up the money to pay for a new PAC-3 factory, which could cost tens of millions of dollars or more, one of the Japanese government sources said. …
    12. Japan’s Ministry of Defense declined to comment. MHI declined to comment.
    13. A U.S. defence official said a $4.5 billion contract signed in June with the U.S. Army – the Patriot system’s primary customer – marked the beginning of a ramp-up in production of both missiles and seekers.
    14. Foreign and defence ministers from Japan and the United States are set to meet in Tokyo this month for talks that are expected to include deepening industrial cooperation on defence. The Patriot project is seen as a key part of that effort.
    15. Even with help from allies, supply chain bottlenecks complicate U.S. efforts to supply Ukraine’s demand for munitions, including air defence systems that can thwart Russian attacks. …
    16. In December 2023, Japan eased military export rules to allow it to help replenish U.S. Patriot missile stocks, which had been tapped to help Ukraine.
    17. S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, who called that a “historic decision”, has been a leading proponent of deeper military industrial ties with Japan that could ease the strain on U.S. defence contractors.
    18. S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed in April to deepen defence industry cooperation.
    19. In an opinion piece published by the Wall Street Journal two months after that meeting, Emanuel described a shrunken U.S. military industrial complex as a “weak link” that had been exposed by the Ukraine war and the Middle East conflict.
    20. MIKE: This is another example of lack of US preparedness for military production in the event of a national emergency. It’s a problem decades in the making, with a previous policy of allowing the export of industrial capacity to China and other nations in the name of “efficiency”.
    21. MIKE: As exemplified by the timeframes in this story and others I’ve read, this sort of industrial capacity can’t be turned on overnight like a spigot. It can take years for production to catch up with needs. In the event that the US found itself in a major conflict, a full industrial mobilization might make the process faster, but still likely not fast enough to avoid initial reverses on the battlefield.
12. Trump says Taiwan should pay US for defence: ‘they took about 100% of our chip business’; Trump’s Democratic rival, President Joe Biden, earlier upset Beijing with comments that appeared to suggest the US would defend Taiwan. REUTERS.COM | Published: 11:02am, 17 Jul 2024. TAGS: Taiwan, United States, Defence, US Politics, US presidential election 2024, Joe Biden’s China policy, Diplomacy, Semiconductors, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Donald Trump,
    1. Taiwan should pay the United States for its defence as it does not give the country anything, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said, sending shares of Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC lower on Wednesday.
    2. “I know the people very well, respect them greatly. They did take about 100 per cent of our chip business. I think, Taiwan should pay us for defence,” Trump said in interview on June 25 that was published on Tuesday.
    3. “You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.”
    4. The US is Taiwan’s most important international supporter and arms supplier, but there is no formal defence agreement. The US is however bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.
    5. Taiwan has made defence modernisation a priority, including developing its own submarines, and has said many times the island’s security rests in its own hands.
    6. Responding to Trump’s comments, Cho Jung-tai, Taiwan’s premier, said on Wednesday that the island was willing to take on more responsibility for defending itself and is steadily increasing defence spending.
    7. “Taiwan has steadily strengthened its defence budget and demonstrated its responsibility to the international community,” he told reporters in Taipei. “We are willing to take on more responsibility; we are defending ourselves and ensuring our security.”
    8. … Most countries, including the US, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force.
    9. US President Joe Biden has upset Beijing with comments that appeared to suggest the US would defend Taiwan if it were attacked, a deviation from a long-held US position of “strategic ambiguity”.
    10. Washington and Taipei have had no official diplomatic or military relationship since 1979, when the US switched recognition to Beijing.
    11. TSMC is the dominant maker of advanced chips used in everything from AI applications to smartphones and fighter jets, and analyst believe any conflict over Taiwan would decimate the world economy. …
    12. TSMC is spending billions building new factories overseas, including US$65 billion on three plants in the US state of Arizona, though it says most manufacturing will remain in Taiwan.
    13. Taiwan also has a backlog worth some US$19 billion of arms deliveries from the United States, which US officials and politicians have repeatedly pledged to speed up.
    14. Since 2022, Taiwan has complained of delays in deliveries of US weapons such as Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, as manufacturers focused on supplying Ukraine to help it battle invading Russian forces.
    15. In April, the US Congress had passed a sweeping foreign aid package which includes arms support for the island, after House Republican leaders abruptly switched course and allowed a vote on the US$95 billion in mostly military aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and US partners in the Indo-Pacific.
    16. Beijing held two days of war games around the island shortly after Taiwanese leader Lai Ching-te took office in May, saying it was “punishment” for his inauguration speech, which it denounced as being full of separatist content.
    17. Beijing has also been using grey zone warfare against Taiwan, wielding irregular tactics to exhaust a foe by keeping them continually on alert without resorting to open combat. This includes sending balloons over the island and almost daily air force missions into the skies near Taiwan.
    18. MIKE: As is often the case, in spite of having been president with all the information that was given him and available to him, Trump is entirely ignorant of the nature of the US relationship with Taiwan; the complications present in this relationship in view of our relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC); the importance of Taiwan to the US and global economy and technology industries; and the billions of dollars that Taiwan spends with the US for armaments and weapons systems. That money goes into making our own weapons systems more affordable as well as helping to support the military providers that the US counts on for its own defense.
    19. MIKE: As the story points out, the US can’t even provide the weapons Taiwan wants to buy to them fast enough for their own defense.
    20. MIKE: Many countries help defray costs of their own defense by providing the US with basing rights and facilities. Sometimes they even pay for various functions required by US forces as a way of contributing to their own defense. Taiwan can’t do that because we technically consider Taiwan as part of “One China”, and thus we cannot base forces in Taiwan. Taiwan cannot pay us anything toward their defense as some countries do because, again, that would create a diplomatic crisis with the PRC.
    21. MIKE: On the other hand, supply chains are fragile and strategically important. Taiwan has enormous strategic significance for the US and for our allies. As a dominant supplier of electronic components, a blockaded, occupied, or destroyed Taiwan would have a crippling effect on US industry and defense capabilities. It would take years for the US to recover from that kind of loss, if ever.
    22. MIKE: The US is trying to rebuild its industrial infrastructure, and that includes adding chip-making capacity, but again, that takes years.
    23. MIKE: Trump is showing us again how his remarkable ignorance of things — strategic, geopolitical, and otherwise — make him not only unfit to be president, but actually make him a witting or unwitting tool of our adversaries.
13. Front-line NATO allies are facing an unconventional Russian threat short of war but still quite dangerous; By Constantine Atlamazoglou | BUSINESSINSIDER.COM | Jun 22, 2024, 7:15 AM CDT. TAGS: Russia, Ukraine, NATO, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Baltic Countries, Hybrid Warfare,
    1. The three Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have been at the forefront of the conflict between the West and Russia since the latter’s invasion of Ukraine.
    2. Staunch supporters of Ukraine, they – along with Denmark – have given the most aid to Kyiv in relation to their GDP and have been pushing for strict sanctions on Moscow.
    3. Although they are members of NATO and the EU, the Baltics are in a precarious position. Bordering Russia or its ally Belarus, they are small and were part of the Soviet Union until its collapse. Furthermore, over 20% of the population of Estonia and Latvia and 5% of Lithuania are ethnically Russian.
    4. [MIKE: FYI, this is not an accident. It’s a result of Stalin’s “Russifying” colonization efforts to make his grip on these countries and other republics within the USSR more politically secure. Continuing with the story …]
    5. … Russia seems to be employing unconventional methods against them that blur the line between war and peace, and fall into what is called the “gray zone.” …
    6. NATO has also cautioned against intensifying Russian hybrid warfare in the region and in the rest of Europe that could include “disinformation, sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference, and other hybrid operations.”
    7. Indeed, a year later in May 2024, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova blamed the Baltics for severing most of their ties with Russia, adding, “We will also respond to the hostile actions of the Baltic states with asymmetrical measures, primarily in the economic and transit spheres.”
    8. Moscow is suspected of following through with its threats.
    9. In May, a leaked Russian proposal outlined plans to redraw Russia’s territorial waters with Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Petrov said the proposal wasn’t politically motivated but implied it was required to ensure Russia’s security amid escalating regional tensions.
    10. Although the proposal was deleted a day after it leaked, the following day several buoys demarcating the territorial waters between Russia and Estonia on the Narva River were removed by the Russian coast guard.
    11. Estonian high officials urged calm, but Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis was more pointed [, saying]: “Another Russian hybrid operation is underway, this time attempting to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about their intentions in the Baltic Sea.”
    12. Additionally, there has recently been increased jamming of the satellite navigation systems of commercial aircraft in [the] region, which appears to be originating from within Russian territory. …
    13. All three Baltic countries have been targeted by influence operations. Estonia has seen a rise in sabotages that included damage to an undersea gas pipeline and telecommunications cables between it and Finland. Espionage, cyber attacks, and election tampering are also a concern, with Estonia having arrested the most Russian agents per capita in the EU.
    14. Hybrid warfare can use various tools – including military, informational, economic, civilian, and others – but it falls short of overt military action.
    15. Its purpose is to destabilize a country’s government, institutions, or population while often preventing attribution back to the perpetrator – occasionally, a purposeful and targeted action may even appear to be a random event.
    16. Although hybrid warfare is not a new strategy, nor one employed exclusively by Russia and its allies, it has received increased attention following Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea as Moscow used a variety of military and non-military tools, which were described as hybrid, to capture the peninsula without meaningful Ukrainian resistance.
    17. The murky nature of hybrid warfare can make it hard to identify and address potential threats. Yet, the Baltic countries are prioritizing hybrid threats and fortifying their institutions in response.
    18. Tellingly, Latvia, in its 2016 National Defense Concept – the country’s overarching defense strategy – named hybrid threats and Russia as the main threats to its security for the first time.
    19. [L]ast week, writing alongside his Polish and Czech colleagues, Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs expressed “deep concern” over Russian hybrid threats.
    20. [Rinkēvičs said,] “We will act individually and collectively to address these actions, boost our resilience, and continue to coordinate closely to ensure that the Alliance and Allies are prepared to deter and defend against hybrid actions or attacks.”
    21. MIKE: The terms “hybrid threats” and “gray zone tactics” are basically like the metaphor of slowly boiling a frog to death in a pot before it realizes it’s being cooked.
    22. MIKE: These unconventional “gray zone” tactics were used against Ukraine for some period of time before Russia invaded.
    23. MIKE: The NATO allies appear to be taking this threat at least as seriously as it deserves, since they’ve already seen this playbook used by the Russians before. To use another metaphor, it might be compared to using artillery to “soften up” enemy defenses before staging a mass attack. Maybe it should be called “Cyber Artillery” to evoke a more visceral response, because that is what it amounts to.

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