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FYI: WordPress is forcing me to work with a new type of editor, so things will look … different … for a while. I’m hoping I’ll improve with a learning curve. Please bear with me — Mike

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1. 1. The next election is scheduled for May 3, 2025, with early voting beginning on April 22, 2025, which is only about 2 weeks from now.
      1. The deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot is April 22, which is also only about 2 weeks. You qualify for a mail-in ballot if you’ll be out-of-county on election day, or because you qualify by reason of age or disability. Applications for a mail-in ballot must be filled out and RECEIVED by the County or State by April 22^rd.
      2. You can download forms for a mail-in ballot at HARRISVOTES DOT COM if you live in Harris County, or at VOTETEXAS DOT GOV for anywhere in Texas.
   2. HCC cancels student trip to London, citing fears of Trump immigration crackdown; by Miranda Dunlap | Houstonlanding.Org | April 4, 2025 @ 4:00 am. TAGS: Houston Community College (HCC), Study Abroad, Trump Administration,
      1. Houston Community College student Juan Manrique spent months dreaming about a 10-day study abroad trip to London with 80 of his fellow Honors College classmates.
      2. The business major, who enrolled at HCC largely because of the promise of the annual international trip, even bought $500 tickets to attend his first Premier League soccer game while in England.
      3. But HCC leaders canceled the trip in mid-February, leaving students miffed. Over the following weeks, college administrators offered conflicting explanations for their decision and opted instead on a four-day jaunt to San Antonio, three students said.
      4. Now, a politically-charged reason for the cancellation has been confirmed.
      5. In a recording obtained by the Houston Landing, HCC leaders told the Honors College students this week that they nixed the all-expenses-paid trip abroad partly due to fears about the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown. 
      6. [An HCC administrator, whose identity couldn’t be confirmed by the Landing, told the students,] “We’ve had recent incidents where folks have legitimate visas and they’re being picked up. Having a trip closer to home is better, because we can get to people faster. If something goes wrong, we can get to San Antonio.”
      7. The decision marks another result of colleges and universities nationwide scrambling to respond to a barrage of executive orders, memos and visa revocations surrounding international students. Some American colleges and universities have canceled foreign trips or advised international students and staff not to leave the country.
      8. For HCC, the cancellation marks one of the most impactful moves made by the college in response to the Trump administration. Houston-area community colleges have not been significantly impacted by Trump’s immigration actions, his threats to withhold federal funding from higher education institutions, or his attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
      9. In interviews, the three Honors College students — Manrique,  Bradley Michalsky and Dakota Williams — told the Landing that they understand fears about the Trump administration’s actions, but the decision to pivot to San Antonio and inconsistent communication by HCC leaders have eroded their trust in the college. While HCC covers the cost of the Honors College trip, some students spent hundreds or thousands of dollars making accommodations to travel abroad and don’t expect to get reimbursed by the college.
      10. [Manrique said,] “I’m not from a rich family. I don’t do yearly vacations, I don’t do summer vacations. I do none of that. Some of us …  have not seen anything outside of Houston or Texas. Some of us needed that to see what we’re missing outside these walls. It kind of breaks my heart. They just stripped it from us.”
      11. In response to questions from the Landing, HCC spokesperson Stephen Lestarjette said in statements that there is “no single cause” for canceling the London trip. Rather, the college conducted a “risk assessment” and shifted to create the “safest travel experience possible.”
      12. [Lestarjette said,] “Unfortunately, after considering numerous factors, travel plans for Honors College were changed. The new location was determined based on time constraints, student academic schedules, and an evaluation of travel risks.”
      13. … HCC’s Honors College prominently features the international trip experience on its website, and multiple students said the chance to travel abroad is the reason they chose HCC over other colleges. To take the trip, students must maintain a 3.2 GPA while taking at least 12 credits per semester, complete community service, participate in campus cultural events and finish a humanities course tailored to their destination.
      14. [Said Michalsky, a business and accounting major and Honors College student,] “Everybody had to work their butts off (for this). It’s all these requirements that you have to stay within the college, and this (trip) is the big, big driving factor.”
      15. Ahead of this year’s trip to London, students made sometimes complicated and expensive preparations. Astou Sene, an international student from Senegal, said she paid over $2,000 to travel back home to obtain proper visa documentation for traveling to England. Williams, who has a heart condition that can make her feel dizzy, spent months securing proper accommodations for her travel and activities, on top of buying her passport.
      16. But at the end of January, HCC leaders unexpectedly canceled the trip. The three students said administrators told them in a meeting that Trump’s flurry of executive orders stoked fears about students traveling out of the country.
      17. Several weeks later, the students said, HCC leaders walked that back in another meeting and offered a different reason for the reversal: the State Department placing a Level 2 travel advisory on London. The advisory urges travelers to “exercise increased caution” while abroad.
      18. The explanation raised students’ eyebrows because the federal government issued the Level 2 advisory in September 2024, more than a month before HCC administrators chose London as their destination. The three students told the Landing that their Honor College directors told them that the college wouldn’t permit any travel over the next four years.
      19. Several students then attended and spoke at a mid-February HCC board meeting to demand answers and plans for an alternative trip. The students also recounted the different explanations they said HCC administrators gave them for the cancellation — comments the college’s student newspaper, The Egalitarian, published online.
      20. Two days later, two HCC administrators released a statement to the media disputing some of the published claims. The administrators listed their titles, but not their names.
      21. [The statement read,] “Travel remains an option across the district provided that proper procedures are followed. Reports that all student travel has been curtailed for four years are incorrect.”
      22. Several days later, the three Honors College students met with HCC Chancellor Margaret Ford Fisher. Her team told them to make a list of five domestic travel destinations they would enjoy, the students said. The students opted for locations they thought could offer a taste of different cultures: Hawaii, New York, South Padre Island.
      23. On Tuesday, Manrique, Michalsky and Williams attended a meeting where HCC administrators broke the news: It was San Antonio — which was not on their list of suggested locations — or nothing. One of the unnamed administrators made the comment about the immigration and visa fears during the meeting.
      24. “It’s just been a string-along,” Williams said. 
      25. HCC administrators did not dispute the students’ accounts in response to questions from the Landing.
      26. [Lestarjette said in a statement,] “Out of an abundance of caution, we temporarily suspended travel arrangements to complete a risk assessment and develop a procedure that allows a risk review earlier in the process. We understand how disappointing the changes have been for our students and expect that the new student travel process will avoid similar issues in the future.”
      27. … As Honors College students processed the news, the consensus was clear. While San Antonio boasts the Alamo, puffy tacos and the River Walk, they were overwhelmingly disappointed by the pick.
      28. [Said Manrique, who called it an “F-tier” trip, “We had to tell the (other students) that they were getting a bag of chips when they thought they were getting caviar. We can go there ourselves on a weekend.”
      29. Honors College students will now turn to crafting their mid-May trip — and how they’ll make it educational. When the students asked in the meeting what the trip would look like, officials offered that they could visit museums, the Alamo and other missions, and take free time to explore, according to the recording. HCC administrators said they’ll plan a meeting to build a travel itinerary. 
      30. Still, students want the college to reimburse students like Sene who absorbed large costs in preparation for the trip. In the Tuesday meeting, an unnamed administrator said “there probably will not be reimbursement.” 
      31. [The administrator said,] “She chose to do that. I realized she probably felt she had no choice, but it was a private decision.”
      32. Lestarjette said in a statement Thursday that HCC is reviewing “non-public funded means” to potentially do so.
      33. Williams said the students also want “an apology, at the very least,” for the “convoluted” situation.
      34. [Manrique said,] “HCC has always been a special place to me. But my opinion has changed a lot.”
      35. MIKE: It was horrible to have to crush the students’ plans for a trip to London when they had such high expectations for the trip, not to mention the money they spent based on their trust in HCC to follow through with their promises.
      36. MIKE: But of course, the real point of the story is that these students worked very hard for a trip that they were promised, and then had to settle for a “meh” trip that few, if any, of them chose. What makes it even worse is that the HCC administration gave them so many shifting reasons and excuses for the change of plans.
      37. MIKE: I think it’s clear that the Trump regime’s changes to immigration and visa travel, and how it is already affecting international students and visitors, is the proximate cause for these changes.
      38. MIKE: I might also speculate that HCC was dancing around their reasons for changing the travel plans because they were afraid to publicly and specifically blame Trump and his xenophobic policies.
      39. MIKE: Further, I think that changing the trip to San Antonio when the students had other ideas was a real slap in the face. What was HCC’s true method to this travel destination madness?
      40. Just for grins, I went to VisitSanAntonio dot Com, and I was underwhelmed. I suppose the Alamo is interesting for foreign students to a point, but I’m certain that the informative displays there still tell a stilted version of the story instead of the actual one that history has increasingly revealed.
      41. MIKE: The last time I visited the Riverwalk, it seemed to me to have evolved into a tourist trap of restaurants, bars, and party locations.
      42. MIKE: As for museums and other points of interest, I don’t think there’s much in San Antonio that doesn’t have equivalents in metro Houston.
      43. MIKE: Within 350 miles of Houston, I might choose both Dallas and Fort Worth for their disparate history and cultures. New Orleans could have been an exciting destination that would have given these students a real sample of history and different cultures within and around New Orleans itself. There are also the plantations that can be visited within 50 miles of the city that can give the students real insight into the antebellum American South and the Confederacy.
      44. MIKE: But I’m kind of betting that this is not the kind of history and culture that HCC was eager to show and tell for political reasons, regardless of how important it is to show how far we’ve come from where we were as a country and what it has cost.
      45. MIKE: I hope that the reporter, Miranda Dunlap, gives us some follow-up to how this ultimately sorts out.
   3. How John Whitmire kept Texas prisons hot as ‘living hell’; By Gwen Howerton, Audience Producer | CHRON.COM | April 1, 2025. TAGS: Texas Prisons, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), Air-Conditioned Prisons,
      1. A years-long fight over the temperature inside Texas prisons has entered a new phase. In a landmark ruling issued on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled that keeping inmates in extremely hot prison facilities with no air conditioning is “plainly unconstitutional.”
      2. Pitman, who President Barack Obama appointed to the bench, did not order the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to immediately install air conditioning in facilities that lack it. However, he did allow a lawsuit against the state to move forward and ordered both the plaintiffs and defendants to lay out a timeline for trial proceedings by early April.
      3. In his 91-page ruling, Pitman repeatedly cast dangerous temperatures in Texas jails as a form of unconstitutional treatment that, in his view, violates the Eighth Amendment’s provision guarding against “cruel and unusual punishment.” The case was brought by Bernie Tiede, a 65-year-old former inmate who sued TDCJ over conditions in his Huntsville cell, where temperatures regularly reached 110 degrees and caused Tiede to suffer a stroke, according to court documents. 
      4. So why aren’t Texas prisons air conditioned? The simple answer is money. Lawmakers haven’t budgeted much, if any, money to upgrade AC in the state’s prisons, which Pitman acknowledged in his ruling “will take hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to install permanent air conditioning in every TDCJ facility.” 
      5. But perhaps no figure has been as associated with the failure to air condition Texas prisons than former State Sen. John Whitmire, who is now the mayor of Houston.
      6. Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related death worldwide. Any Texan who has gone even a few hours in an unconditioned room during our brutal summers knows how hot it can get. Roughly 85,000 Texas inmates are held in prison facilities without air conditioning in living areas. State law requires that county jails be kept anywhere from 65 to 85 degrees, but most of Texas’ state jails and prisons lack full AC. Since Texas began collecting data on the temperature of its prisons, the state’s own data shows that the interior of prison cells can top 90 to 100 degrees during the summer. One inmate compared conditions in Texas jails to a cookout on a hot day: “It’s like you’re standing over a grill all day.” Another described them as “a living hell.” An investigation by the Texas Tribune found that at least 41 inmates died of extreme heat-related causes or unknown causes during last year’s brutal summer heat wave.
      7. Whitmire is not the sole reason Texas prisons are so hot that experts have called the extreme temperatures “serious human rights violations.” But his role as the chair of Senate Criminal Justice for nearly 30 years meant he had sway over the funding and construction of prisons in the state, including air conditioning. Despite a conservative push to remove Democrats from committee leadership in recent years, Whitmire time and time again retained his seat with full support from Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. During the 2023 legislative session, Patrick appointed just one Democrat to chair a Senate Committee: Whitmire.
      8. Whitmire retained his chairmanship while other Democrats lost theirs thanks to the conservative, tough-on-crime stances he’s taken throughout his career, from his time as a freshman legislator to City Hall. His record includes shepherding bills through the Senate that provided funding to build more jails and was key to the passage of harsher sentencing laws. Over the years, Whitmire has repeatedly framed air conditioning as a luxury that the state can’t afford and that Texas prisoners don’t deserve. He briefly went viral when his comments on a radio show in 2011 were featured in a 2021 segment on John Oliver’s show, Last Week Tonight.
      9. [Whitmire said in a 2011 interview with Houston radio station KTRH,] “It’s not gonna change. The prisons are hot. They’re uncomfortable. The real solution is don’t commit a crime, and you stay at home and be cool. One, we don’t want to. Number two, we couldn’t afford it if we wanted to.”
      10. [MIKE: As soon as I saw that headline, I thought about the John Oliver segment that briefly, but unforgettably, featured then-Texas state senator from SD-15 John Whitmire. (Full disclosure, he was my state senator.) I’ll play that bit later in my analysis of this story. Continuing with the story …]
      11. Whitmire’s comments didn’t stop there. Throughout his career, he’s portrayed heat in Texas prisons as either a problem too big to be solved or a part of the punishment for a crime. Neither Whitmire nor a spokesperson for Whitmire responded to several requests for comment.
      12. [Whitmire told The New York Times in 2012,] “Texans are not motivated to air-condition inmates. These people are sex offenders, rapists, murderers. And we’re going to pay for their air-conditioning when I can’t go down the street and provide air-conditioning to hard-working, tax-paying citizens?” 
      13. [MIKE: I’ll pause again here because this brings up an important philosophical question I’ve mentioned on the air a few times. It was memorably asked by sorely missed Houston radio talk show host David Fowler on his show. Basically, “Do we send people to prison as punishment, or do we send people to prison for punishment?”]
      14. [MIKE: So, what’s the difference? In one case, the very fact of being in prison — of being deprived of your liberty; of being fed food you don’t choose and of questionable quality; of having your life regimented according to prison rules. That’s prison as
      15. [MIKE: On the other hand, being kept in facilities that are kept fairly cold in winter and tortuously — even fatally — hot in summer, that is part of being sent to prison for Mind you, that doesn’t include the assaults, shakedowns, and the fear that often accompanies imprisonment. That might be for another show.]
      16. [MIKE: Whitmire clearly believes that we send people to prison for In other words, depriving of their liberty is not sufficient punishment. Further punishment is also to take place at the prison. Here is a portion of a 13 minute segment that John Oliver did in June 2021. I’ve excerpted 42 seconds. I’ll warn you that the sound quality is not superb.
      17. [MIKE: PLAY Whitmire AUDIO]
      18. [MIKE: I’ll touch on this more a little later, but continuing … ]
      19. Amid yet another round of legislative discussions about deadly temperatures in Texas prisons in 2014, spurred in part by a report from the University of Texas School of Law’s Human Rights Clinic, Whitmire said that a “grown-up discussion of what’s practical and reasonable” was needed, but that again it was not a priority of his. He returned again to the idea that Texans did not want air-conditioned prisons.
      20. [Whitmire said in 2014,] “I can tell you, the people of Texas don’t want air-conditioned prisons, and there’s a lot of other things on my list above the heat. It’s hot in Texas, and a lot of Texans who are not in prison don’t have air conditioning.” 
      21. Whitmire’s critics contend that when he says that Texans didn’t want air-conditioned jails, Whitmire really meant that he didn’t want air-conditioned jails. 
      22. [MIKE: A former head of the correction officer’s union had this to say on that: PLAY AUDIO CLIP. Continuing …]
      23. [Scott Henson, a longtime criminal justice reform advocate, told Chron over text,] “His role was that he just didn’t want to do it, considered it a nonstarter, and would never allow the issue to come up in his committee in the Senate or in budget discussions if he could help it. He just didn’t want to. So when you ask what his role was, he’d say he didn’t have one. And he’s right, in a way, but that’s because he refused to lift a finger on the topic.”
      24. But whether or not taxpayers want to pay for air conditioning in state prisons, they’re already footing a costly bill. Complications from extreme heat and deaths have resulted in a stream of lawsuits over the past decade. In 2018, Texas settled a lawsuit by agreeing to install air conditioning in a geriatric prison outside College Station. According to the Tribune, installing the air conditioning cost $4 million, and the legal fight cost Texas more than $7 million. 
      25. In recent years, Whitmire has warmed to the idea that prisons in Texas are too hot. In 2023, as he began running for mayor, he told the Houston Chronicle Editorial Boardthat he was concerned about dangerous temperatures in both the summer and winter. But again, Whitmire said it wasn’t one of his priorities.
      26. [Whitmire told the board in 2023,] “The prisons are nothing but a concrete box and steel. I’m sensitive to it. But I do have people in Acres Homes that don’t have air conditioning, too.”
      27. Texas is slowly working to equip facilities with air conditioning, and TDCJ [Texas Department of Criminal Justice] has spent $13 million out of an allocated $85 million to install more cooling units. Two bills have been filed in the state legislature to explicitly require prisons to be equipped with air conditioning; neither has received hearings. State Senator Joan Huffman (R-Houston), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, has similarly shown little appetite to take up bills that would provide funding for air conditioning in Texas jails. All the while, Texas summers are only getting hotter, with little relief for the state’s prison population in sight.
      28. MIKE: I’ll be candid here. I lost a certain amount of respect from then-State Senator John Whitmire when I heard that audio. He just sounded so cruel and indifferent to this situation. Yes, these people are criminals, and yes, some of them are violent. But a lot of them are not. In any case, the US Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment, which living in a hotbox is.
      29. MIKE: I’ll note there that when Whitmire said to the Houston Chronicle Editorial Board in 2023 that, “The prisons are nothing but a concrete box and steel. I’m sensitive to it,” was that the truth? Is John Whitmire sensitive to people living in concreate boxes in Texas summers without air conditioning? Is he more sensitive now than he was in 2011, or is he just softening his statement because of how bad it sounded back then?
      30. MIKE: Yes, there are people in Acres Homes and in many other areas of Houston without air conditioning, and that’s terrible. And maybe the city and state and federal governments should try to do something about that.
      31. MIKE: But it’s worth noting that those people who are not in prison can turn on ceiling or floor fans. They might air condition one room at night so they can sleep. They can go outside for a hoped-for breeze. They can go to an air-conditioned fast-food place or restaurant or theater for some respite from the heat. If it’s safe, they can sleep in their back yards or on their apartment balconies.
      32. MIKE: During severe heat waves, the city even opens cooling centers for residents, and in the final extremity, people can go there. People in prison can do none of these things. I’m not even sure that people in prison can get cold drinks.
      33. MIKE: If you have any doubt how miserable it is in prison in a Houston summer, turn your AC up to 90^o or 95^o for a few hours. Or even try the state-mandated maximum “safe” temperature of 85^o for a few hours without ceiling fans. How long could you hold out without going outside, going someplace, or just turning the thermostat down again?
      34. MIKE: Now imagine living like that for a few years or a few decades or for the rest of your life.
      35. MIKE: There’s also some evidence which I’ve linked to in this blog post that violent crime increases a couple of percentage points as temperatures climb above 75^o-90^o. Now imagine a place where violence-prone people are locked up en masse in intolerably hot temperatures, and you have the almost literal definition of a pressure cooker.
      36. MIKE: And after all that I’ve said, I haven’t even mentioned the people who work in these pressure cooker prisons. These people can at least take occasional respite in office spaces in the prisons that usually have AC, and they can go home to air conditioning and a safe shower to cool off and clean up. But they share the prisoners’ living conditions as their working conditions.
      37. MIKE: While correction officers are at work, they suffer physical danger from the hot and frustrated and possibly violent prisoners, as well as the dangers they face to their health from these hot temperatures. But again, these employees at least have access to ice cold drinks other cooling measures.
      38. According to a KERA news story from last year, “State law does not require prisons to have AC. As of summer 2022, just 31 of the 100 state-run lockups had air conditioning in all prisoner housing areas. Temperatures inside the state’s non-air-conditioned units averaged well over 85 degrees [in] June, according to state data.”
      39. According to a web page from the TDCJ updated April first — in other words, just this week — “Core to the mission of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is protecting the public, our employees, and the inmates in our custody. Over the last several years, the agency has worked to increase the number of cool beds available. TDCJ is dedicated to continuing to add air-conditioned beds in our facilities.
      40. “During the 88th Texas Legislative session, TDCJ received a historic infusion of funding for major repair and improvement projects at facilities. Specifically, the agency received $85 million to install additional air conditioning. Additionally, TDCJ’s Legislative Appropriations Request for the FY2026-27 biennium includes an exceptional item request for $118 million for the installation of air conditioning. If approved, this would provide an additional 16,000 air-conditioned beds to the system, which would bring the total number of air-conditioned beds to more than 78,000.
      41. “Currently,[MIKE: And this is as of April 1^st,] TDCJ has 35 units fully air conditioned and 53 units partially air conditioned.
      42. “From April 15 through October 31, the agency implements enhanced procedures to lessen the effects of hot temperatures for those in our facilities.”
      43. MIKE: Given legislative and gubernatorial will, and court orders, it will probably take Texas through at least the end of the 2020s to finish air conditioning the rest of the prisons in the TDC. If then.
      44. MIKE: In the meantime, consider listening to the entire John Oliver segment with I’ve linked to. It goes into a lot more detail, and even though it’s now 4 years old, very little has changed. I’ll warn you that the sound quality is not superb.
      45. REFERENCE: The urban crime and heat gradient in high and low poverty areas — SCIENCEDIRECT.COM
      46. REFERENCE: Here’s Why Warm Weather Causes More Violent Crimes—From Mass Shootings To Aggravated Assault — FORBES.COM, 2023/07/06
      47. REFERENCE: TDCJ Air Conditioning Construction Projects — TDCJ.TEXAS.GOV
      48. REFERENCE ARTICLE: John Oliver welcomes summer by reminding you that prisons are cooking people to death — AVCLUB.COM | By Dennis Perkins  |  June 14, 2021
   4. While we’re on the subject of Mayor John Whitmire — Recall Houston; by Charles Kuffner | OFFTHEKUFF.COM | Posted on April 1, 2025. TAGS: Recall Houston, Houston Mayor John Whitmire,
      1. Recall Houston, a group working to recall Houston Mayor John Whitmire, is gaining steam and [ready-ing] for a push to get the effort on the ballot in 2025.
      2. The organization has been working for almost a year, but organizers say the timing is now coming together to get the effort off the ground.
      3. Recalling a mayor in Houston requires 25% of the votes in the last general election. For Houston, that’s about 63,000 signatures – all of which must be gathered and submitted within 30 days. That’s more than 2,000 signatures per day- all of whom must be registered voters in the city of Houston.
      4. The group began accepting donations this week to assist with the effort and launched a new website at the beginning of the year.
      5. [The group’s site reads,] “Whitmire’s administration is incompetent and dangerous for Houston. Throughout the past year, we’ve seen Whitmire damage our city and risk our future.”
      6. A spokesperson for Whitmire told ABC13 that the efforts are not new and that many mayors have faced recall initiatives.
      7. KUFFNER THEN COMMENTS IN FIRST PERSON: Color me skeptical. You know I’m not a big fan of Mayor Whitmire. I’ve heard talk from various folks about a recall effort for some time now, so the existence of this campaign, if it is in that stage yet, isn’t a surprise to me. Certainly, some of the items on their webpage resonate with me – I’m extremely unhappy about the large scale undoing of the 2019 Metro NEXT referendum, for one. But let’s review a few facts here.
      8. – 63K signatures is a lot to collect, though it is doable. 63K signatures in a month, and the clock starts as soon as you get the first one, is a massive and expensive effort that would be an underdog under the best of circumstances. Right now, I don’t see any evidence that such an effort is close to being rolled out.
      9. – Part of the reason for that is that there are no names associated with Recall Houston. Look at their About page, which begins with the sentence “Recall for Houston is a group of Houstonians who want to recall Mayor Whitmire.” Glad we cleared that up. Most people would like to know who’s associated with a group before they throw in with it, even if they align with its goals. If you come for the king, you best know that you’ve got a realistic shot at not missing.
      10. [MIKE: I’ll add here that when I visited the page Kuffner linked to, the steering committee has five names, two of which were identified only by initials. I must assume that those two people are politically or professionally prominent in Houston and they’re concerned that Whitmire might retaliate against them in some way. Continuing with Kuff’s comments …]
      11. KUFF: – It’s my understanding that the recall process here is not one in which you decide whether or not to oust the Mayor, and then if the answer to that is Yes you run an election to replace him. It’s one in which voters are first asked if they want to oust the Mayor, and then right there on the same ballot, next question, who they’d like to replace him with. In other [words], the recall campaign is also the Mayoral campaign for some number of wannabe Mayors, much like the 2003 California gubernatorial recall was also a vote for the next Governor. You may remember what a, um, colorful collection of candidates there were for that. I can only imagine what we’d get in this scenario. Would, say, Chris Hollins throw in his hat? I have my doubts. If there isn’t a serious opponent in this race, one who’d have a decent chance at beating Whitmire in 2027, then what’s the point?
      12. – I may be wrong about that – [MIKE: Kuff comments on this further down with a correction. Continuing …]
      13. [Kuff continues,] … it’s my understanding from talking with other people who are Also Not Fans of Mayor Whitmire. It seems to me that one of the core missions of a recall effort would be to explain to the voters, who have never experienced such an election at least in the 37 years that I’ve lived in Houston, how this works.
      14. – Anyway, my point is that a serious effort would already have big names and some kind of fundraising structure associated with it. They started accepting donations on March 26. Which, good for them, but there’s a very long way to go from there. I’ll be very interested to see what they show in their July finance report.
      15. – Finally, is there any evidence to suggest that Mayor Whitmire has lost some critical amount of support, enough to perhaps put him in danger of a recall effort? We don’t have that kind of polling operation for Houston, so it’s impossible to say for sure. No doubt, there will be some Whitmire voters from 2023 who don’t like some of the things he has done. Every elected official goes through that. That’s a long step away from “and so let’s fire him and replace him with someone else, TBD who”. Maybe commission a poll, and see what you get.
      16. Anyway, you can follow Recall Houston on BlueSky, whose feed goes back four months, and Twitter, whose feed is much busier and I barely got to the beginning of March before I stopped trying to get to the bottom of it. My best guess from looking at the feeds is that this is coming from the pro-biking, anti-watered-down-Montrose-Blvd-project community. I stand with them on these things, but they largely were anti-Whitmire to begin with, and I don’t know how much that coalition has expanded. This would be one way to find out, if they can get it off the ground. The Chron, which notes a Reddit post by Recall Houston from last June, has more.
      17. UPDATE [from KUFF]: From Beth in the comments, there’s this:
      18. If the person sought to be removed shall at said election be recalled, his tenure of office shall terminate upon the determination of the result of the election by the City Council, who shall examine, count and canvass the returns and declare the result as elsewhere provided in this Charter for other elections; and, if an appointed officer, his successor shall at once be appointed by the Mayor and City Council, as provided in this Charter, and if an elective officer, provision shall at once be made for the election of a successor to fill the vacancy, as elsewhere provided for in this Charter and State law.
      19. So, it’s oust first, elect successor if needed later. I suppose I prefer that to the alternative, but it would likely mean at least six months with no Mayor. Again, if this were to happen, which at this time I can’t imagine.
      20. MIKE: I said for a long time that if Texas was ever to elect a Democrat for governor, it could be John Whitmire. He had plenty of campaign money in the bank, and enough conservative credentials to be electable in Texas, and enough progressive credentials for even some of the most liberal Democrats to hold their noses and vote for him.
      21. MIKE: No one was more surprised than me that he announced for mayor of Houston. I have no idea what he was thinking when he made that decision, or why there has been speculation based on some political maneuvering that he might even consider a second term as mayor.
      22. MIKE: When he ran, I assumed that his conservative credentials would be the very thing that would defeat him in a Houston mayoral election, which just goes to show how wrong I can be.
      23. MIKE: I’ll be curious to see if this recall petition gets onto a ballot.
      24. REFERENCE: Group working to recall Houston Mayor John Whitmire gains steam —ABC13.COM | Friday, March 28, 2025 @ 6:14PM
   5. My wife sent this to me with the comment that it was one of the few bits of good news she’d seen nowadays. From AP[dot]COM via YAHOO — Judge awards $6.6 million to whistleblowers who reported Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to FBI; By NADIA LATHAN | AP.COM via YAHOO NEWS | Sat, April 5, 2025 at 1:45 PM CDT. TAGS: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Travis County Judge Catherine Mauzy, Texas Whistleblower Act, U.S. Justice Department, FBI,
      1. A district court judge on Friday awarded more than $6 million combined to four whistleblowers [who were fired shortly after they reported Paxton to the FBI] in their [joint] lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
      2. [Travis County Judge Catherine Mauzy says in her judgment,] “By a preponderance of the evidence,” the plaintiffs proved liability, damages, and attorney’s fees in their complaint against the attorney general’s office.
      3. [Mauzy continued,] “Because the Office of the Attorney General violated the Texas Whistleblower Act by firing and otherwise retaliating against the plaintiff for in good faith reporting violations of law by Ken Paxton and OAG, the court hereby renders judgment for plaintiffs.”
      4. The court found that the four Paxton aides were fired in retaliation for reporting allegations that he was using his office to accept bribes from an Austin real estate developer who employed a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. Paxton has denied accepting bribes or misusing his office to help Nate Paul, the real estate developer.
      5. The judgment also stated that the employees made their reports to law enforcement “in good faith” and that Paxton’s office did not dispute any claims or damages in the lawsuit.
      6. [Said Tom Nesbitt, an attorney for Blake Brickman, and TJ Turner, an attorney for David Maxwell, in a joint statement Friday evening,] “It should shock all Texans that their chief law enforcement officer, Ken Paxton, admitted to violating the law, but that is exactly what happened in this case.”
      7. In a statement to the media that night, Paxton called the ruling “ridiculous” and “not based on the facts or the law.” He also said that his office intends to appeal the ruling.
      8. Paxton was at the center of a federal investigation after eight employees reported his office to the FBI in 2020 for bribery allegations. He agreed to settle the lawsuit for $3.3 million that would be paid by the Legislature. However, the House rejected his request and conducted its own investigation and impeached Paxton in 2023. He was later acquitted in the Senate.
      9. [MIKE: I looked it up, and as far as I can tell, according to a story in the Texas Tribune from February 2023, Paxton subsequently “tentatively agreement to pay $3.3 million to the four whistleblowers and keep in place an appeals court ruling that allowed the case to move forward ….” As I understand that story, that will be in addition to this judgment. Continuing …]
      10. In November, the Texas Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling that Paxton testify in the lawsuit.
      11. The U.S. Justice Department decided not to pursue its investigation into Paxton in the final weeks of the Biden administration, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
      12. MIKE: I don’t know for certain but suspect that our taxpayer dollars are going toward defending our possibly criminal Texas attorney general against these various lawsuits being levied him.
      13. MIKE: This is the Texas version of your tax dollars at work. Are you feeling good about that? Well, if not, there’s always a next election to vote in.
   6. This next story is from March 8^th, but it’s still relevant with the ongoing federal firings, layoffs and random personnel cuts — ‘A blitz attack’: VA mental health experts liken Elon Musk’s emails to warfare; By Andrea Hsu | NPR.ORG | March 7, 2025@5:00 AM ET | Transcript | Heard Saturday, March 8, 2025 on Weekend Edition Saturday. TAGS: Veterans Health Administration, Federal Disasters, Elon Musk, Mental Health
      1. Elon Musk has called his “What did you do last week?” emails to the entire federal workforce “pulse check” reviews.
      2. “Do you have a pulse and two neurons?” he said to laughter at a White House Cabinet meeting last week.
      3. Some mental health professionals with the Veterans Health Administration do not find it funny. They liken the email campaign to psychological warfare: a blitz attack, with each email hitting like a flash-bang grenade aimed at discombobulating the federal workforce.
      4. “Many of us feel like we are being bullied to justify our existence and worth,” said one licensed clinical psychologist, who noted that the VA has long tracked everything she does — how many people she sees, how many phone calls she makes, what time those appointments start and end, what topics they discuss, and even what handouts or homework she provides.
      5. With the [March] weekend approaching, many federal workers are wondering whether another “What did you do last week?” email will soon hit their inboxes, reminding them to send in five bullet points of what they accomplished by Monday.
      6. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on federal employees’ reactions to the emails — or whether another one would be sent this weekend.
      7. The mental health professionals who spoke with NPR about their stress asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation by the government.
      8. … Musk’s demand for a weekly accounting of accomplishments, sent from an Office of Personnel Management (OPM) email address during off-hours, has roiled federal workers across the government. And yet, because the VA has instructed its employees to respond, the mental health workers who spoke to NPR feel they cannot ignore the ask.
      9. On social media, Musk suggested employees could lose their jobs if they failed to respond. At his Cabinet meeting, President Trump said those who don’t respond “are on the bubble, as they say.”
      10. Without citing evidence, Trump and Musk suggested that there may be people collecting government paychecks who have moved on to other jobs or may even be dead.
      11. [Said Musk,] “We’re just literally trying to figure out are these people real, are they alive, and can they write an email.”
      12. But the stress brought on by the emails — on top of all the other disruptions hitting the federal workforce, including notifications of mass layoffs ahead — is taking a toll, the psychologist said.
      13. [The clinical psychologist continued,] “I have to keep it together and placate OPM emails, or get terminated, while also answering veterans’ concerns about whether I will be there for them the next week or month. Instead of being able to do good work to address their depression, PTSD, sexual trauma, combat trauma, etc., I have to spend time calming their nerves.”
      14. … A psychiatrist from a different veterans’ health facility says she was in a parking lot at Costco when she saw the first “What did you do last week?” email, which was sent on a Saturday when she was off work and trying to relax with her family.
      15. [She told NPR,] “As someone who specializes in mental health, I can say with confidence that this weekend emailing is meant to psychologically upset federal workers.”
      16. And it’s working.
      17. [The psychiatrist continued, saying,] “I am anxious and irritable at home. I find myself doomscrolling for the first time ever, which is negatively impacting my mental health and something I tell my veterans to not do.”
      18. The psychiatrist also describes a paranoia that has set in at work. Colleagues are careful about what they say in online messages and at meetings, out of fear that they are being monitored by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, she said.
      19. She assumes that all the responses to the “What did you do last week?” email are being analyzed using artificial intelligence, but doesn’t know to what end.
      20. “I truly believe this is a nefarious process,” she said.
      21. Amy Edmondson, a professor and social psychologist at Harvard Business School, understands where that suspicion is coming from.
      22. Normally, an employer doesn’t reach out to a worker on their day off unless it’s a real emergency, she says. In the context of the Trump administration’s broad push to shrink the federal workforce, a seemingly simple request to list five accomplishments from the prior week could be worrisome at best and distressing at worst.
      23. [Explains Edmondson,] “You don’t know what’s underneath it. What does the sender really want? Who’s it for? How will it help?”
      24. … [That week in March,] the Department of Veterans Affairs laid the initial groundwork for mass layoffs as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to “eliminate waste, reduce management and bureaucracy, reduce footprint, and increase workforce efficiency,” with an initial goal of cutting more than 80,000 positions across the department, according to a VA memo shared by the American Federation of Government Employees.
      25. The mental health professionals who spoke with NPR do not know whether they will be affected. While they have thought about jobs outside the government, they love their work and don’t want to leave the veterans they’ve been helping behind.
      26. [The psychologist said,] “In the private sector, I could be working with ‘easier’ or less-complicated patients. The reality is that those of us that opt to come to work for the VA do so because of our call to duty to serve those that served us.”
      27. MIKE: At some point, when you keep asking people to do more with less, you will ultimately expect them to do everything with nothing.
      28. MIKE: Anyone who has followed Musk’s career at Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter can figure out that he’s a terrible person to work for. Historically, he seems to make unreasonable demands on his employees’ time, treating them almost like automatons. His management style seems to me to be remorseless, even as corporate executives go, and that’s saying something. Most CEOs at least pretend to value their employees. I’ve yet to see any real evidence of that from Musk’s public persona and statements.
      29. MIKE: This is an awful time to be an American, but it must be even worse for federal employees and contractors.
   7. Continuing on that theme, from ArsTechnica — “Chaos” at state health agencies after US illegally axed grants, lawsuit says; By Jon Brodkin | ARSTECHNICA.COM | Apr 1, 2025 3:37 PM. TAGS: Health And Human Services (HHS), HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Public Health Grants, Lawsuit,
      1. Nearly half of US states sued the federal government and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [on April 1^st] in a bid to halt the termination of $11 billion in public health grants. The lawsuit was filed by 23 states and the District of Columbia.
      2. [A press release issued by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said,] “The grant terminations, which came with no warning or legally valid explanation, have quickly caused chaos for state health agencies that continue to rely on these critical funds for a wide range of urgent public health needs such as infectious disease management, fortifying emergency preparedness, providing mental health and substance abuse services, and modernizing public health infrastructure.”
      3. The litigation is led by Colorado, California, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington [state]. The other plaintiffs are Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
      4. Nearly all of the plaintiffs are represented by a Democratic attorney general. Kentucky and Pennsylvania have Republican attorneys general and are instead represented by their governors, both Democrats.
      5. The complaint, filed in US District Court for the District of Rhode Island, is in response to the recent cut of grants that were originally created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. [The states’ lawsuit said,] “The sole stated basis for Defendants’ decision is that the funding for these grants or cooperative agreements was appropriated through one or more COVID-19 related laws,”.
      6. The lawsuit says the US sent notices to states that grants were terminated “for cause” because “the grants and cooperative agreements were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out.”
      7. An HHS public statement last week said, “The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago. HHS is prioritizing funding projects that will deliver on President Trump’s mandate to address our chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”
      8. … But the funding approved by Congress was not limited to the period of the COVID-19 emergency, the states’ lawsuit said. [The states told the court,] “And after the pandemic was declared over, Congress reviewed the COVID-19 related laws, rescinded $27 billion in funds, but determined not to rescind any of the funding at issue here.”
      9. The end of the pandemic is not a lawful basis to end the grants because for-cause terminations may only be “based on the grant recipient’s ‘material failure’ to comply with the agreement,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit asks the court to declare illegal and vacate the grant terminations, and “preliminarily and permanently enjoin Defendants from implementing or enforcing the Public Health Terminations or reinstituting the terminations for the same or similar reasons and without required statutory or regulatory process.”
      10. The grant terminations raise significant public health risks, the lawsuit said.
      11. [The lawsuit goes on to say,] “If the funding is not restored, key public health programs and initiatives that address ongoing and emerging public health needs of Plaintiffs (collectively, ‘Plaintiff States’) will have to be dissolved or disbanded. Large numbers of state and local public health employees and contractors have been, or may soon be, dismissed from their roles. The result of these massive, unexpected funding terminations is serious harm to public health, leaving Plaintiff States at greater risk for future pandemics and the spread of otherwise preventable disease and cutting off vital public health services.”
      12. [The AP] contacted the US Department of Health and Human Services about the lawsuit and will update this article if it provides a response.
      13. MIKE: As of April 6^th, this article has not been updated further.
      14. MIKE: This regime under Trump and Musk and their minions is running roughshod over our government and our country. Almost every action they are taking is either illegal or legally questionable, but as has been said elsewhere in the media, their purpose is to ‘flood the zone’, doing as much as they can as quickly as possible that it’s not only hard to report all of what’s going on, but to do it so fast that it’s hardly even possible to file timely lawsuits.
      15. MIKE: It’s kind of the administrative version of, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” but with more evil and malicious intent.
   8. And as for evil and malicious intent of our current governing regime, there’s this — DOJ says judge can’t order return of Salvadoran man wrongly deported; By Maegan Vazquez | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | April 5, 2025 at 5:15 p.m. EDT/Today at 5:15 p.m. EDT. TAGS: United States, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, US Justice Department, Deportation, El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia,
      1. Government attorneys slammed a judge’s order to return a Salvadoran immigrant to the United States, arguing in a Saturday filing that the judge’s directive was “indefensible” and that the United States has “no authority” to make a sovereign nation release the man.
      2. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis directed the administration to arrange the return of Kilmar Abrego García, a Salvadoran immigrant married to a U.S. citizen, by no later than 11:59 p.m. Monday. The Justice Department’s response asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit to step in and immediately pause Xinis’s order.
      3. [Justice Department lawyers wrote,] “The United States does not have control over Abrego Garcia. Or [of] the sovereign nation of El Salvador. Nevertheless, the court’s injunction commands that Defendants accomplish, somehow, Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States in give or take one business day. That order is indefensible.” The appeal argues at length that the government has no power to return Abrego García because he is in the custody of the Salvadoran government, though the Trump administration says it is paying El Salvador about $6 million for the detention of deportees.
      4. Xinis’s ruling followed an extraordinary admission from a Justice Department lawyer at the hearing Friday that even he has struggled to obtain answers about why officers deported Abrego García, despite a court order forbidding it because he had fled death threats from gang members in El Salvador. The Trump administration deported the longtime Maryland resident to a prison filled with alleged gang members.
      5. The hasty removal of Abrego García and hundreds of other immigrants to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, where human rights groups have said inmates have faced beatings and shortages of food and water, has spurred criticism that the Trump administration has imprisoned people for matters that are typically civil violations of immigration law. Government officials have argued that they are deporting serious offenders, but they have not identified most of them or provided evidence to support their allegations.
      6. Abrego García’s lawyers have said he had no criminal record in the U.S. or in El Salvador. [According to federal court records,] His immigration troubles began in March 2019, when he said police in Prince George’s County detained him and other young men looking for construction work at a Home Depot.
      7. MIKE: Imprisoning people for civil violations that are not criminal is wrong. Imprisoning them without due process to prove guilt or innocence is wrong. Sending them out of country with the specific intent of trying to put them beyond the reach of US law is wrong.
      8. MIKE: All of this obvious intent to violate and defy US law is not only wrong; it’s evil. We are in the clutches of a lawless regime. A regime that considers itself above the law, and so far has been above the law.
      9. MIKE: We are indeed living in precarious times.
   9. 5 nurses who work on the same floor at Massachusetts hospital have brain tumors; By Dennis Romero and Austin Mullen | NBCNEWS.COM | April 4, 2025, 8:18 PM CDT. TAGS: Boston, Mass General Brigham Newton-Wellesley Hospital, Cancer Cluster, Meningioma,
      1. A Boston-area hospital is investigating after five nurses who have worked on the same floor have developed brain tumors.
      2. Mass General Brigham Newton-Wellesley Hospital said that in total, 11 employees from the fifth-floor maternity unit identified health concerns. Five had brain tumors, all of which are benign. Two of those have the most common, benign type — meningioma, according to the hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, which is about 10 miles west of Boston.
      3. [The hospital’s Jonathan Sonis, associate chief medical officer, and Sandy Muse, chief nursing officer, said in a statement,] “The investigation found no environmental risks which could be linked to the development of a brain tumor.”
      4. The hospital said its investigation was completed in collaboration with government health and safety officials and it considered multiple possible sources. It ruled out disposable masks, the water supply, nearby x-rays, and chemotherapy treatment on the floor below, the hospital said.
      5. [The administrators said,] “Based on these results, we can confidently reassure our dedicated team … and all our patients that there is no environmental risk at our facility.”
      6. The Massachusetts Nurses Association, the union that bargains for nurses’ compensation at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, said it will continue to investigate.
      7. [MNA spokesperson Joe Markman said in a statement Friday,] “Right now, the best way we can help is to complete an independent, scientific investigation. That effort is underway and may take additional weeks.”
      8. The union indicated that nurses came forward with workplace health concerns, which led to the discovery of those with tumors.
      9. [Markman said in his statement,] “The hospital only spoke to a small number of nurses, and their environmental testing was not comprehensive. The hospital cannot make this issue go away by attempting to provide a predetermined conclusion.” 
      10. A spokesperson for a state agency was unable to provide conclusive information on the matter by deadline. Federal occupational health and safety officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
      11. The American Cancer Society says that in order to meet the definition of a cancer cluster, occurrences must be the same type, in the same area, with the same cause, and affecting a number of people that’s “greater than expected” when a baseline for occurrences is established.
      12. [The society said on its cancer clusters webpage,] “Nearly 4 out of 10 people in the United States will develop cancer during their lifetimes. So, it’s not uncommon for several people in a relatively small area to develop cancer around the same time.”
      13. MIKE: I’ve always considered myself to be a basically trusting person who is inclined to believe people until I feel there is reason to believe otherwise.
      14. MIKE: I don’t know if the world has just generally gotten more dishonest or if I’ve just gotten a whole more cynical in my old age, but I have trouble believing any corporate disavowals of anything, and I’m certainly not going to believe anything the federal government is telling me for the next four years.
      15. MIKE: I’m not quite sure if it’s because of corporate officials taking business courses in meaningless corporate-speak, or if it’s the increased influence of lawyers in a litigious society, but we have a real societal and cultural problem of lying at high levels of business and government, and it needs to be seriously addressed if we are to heal and advance as a nation.

That’s all we have time for today. You’ve been listening to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig from KPFT Houston 90.1-HD2, Galveston 89.5-HD2, and Huntsville 91.9-HD2. We are Houston’s Community Media. I hope you’ve enjoyed the show and found it interesting, and I look forward to sharing this time with you again next week. Y’all take care!

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1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
   1. It’s time to snail-mail (no emails or faxes) in your application for mail-ballots, IF you qualify TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
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         7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
         8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
         9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023.
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   2. Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
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