On Friday, Austin ISD officials permitted hundreds of students across 14 campuses to leave school during school hours to participate in anti–Immigration and Customs Enforcement demonstrations around the city. I personally observed several hundred students—some of them very young—marching up Congress Avenue toward the Texas Capitol. Many carried signs bearing vulgar slogans, including messages such...
The “national shutdown” to get “ICE out of everywhere!” descended on major metropolitan cities last week. In all 50 states, more than 1,000 organizations joined together to engage in 300 “actions” — “this was just the beginning,” the website warns. These are not new. “No Kings” rallies, Ukraine war supporters, and pro-Palestine protestors have become...
Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. Texas’ electric grid and the hard work of Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to strengthen it would all be at the top of the winners list, but with the...
Family, then finances—and opportunity. Those are what brought Lianne Halpern back to tiny Shamrock, a small, dusty stop on the famous Route 66 in the Texas panhandle. Like generations of Americans before, Lianne and her family had traveled west along that route in search of the golden promises of California. Lianne’s father worked in the...
Editor’s Note: This is the first part of a series on rural Texas and the challenges that rural Texans face. Over the next year, the Associated News Service will delve into the issues facing the Lone Star State’s 177 (out of 254) rural counties. WHITEHOUSE, Texas—Nathaniel Moran’s football coach tried to put it gently: As...
New data shows a dramatic increase in local government debt last year, which drove property taxes higher and worsened the cost-of-living crisis. According to the Bond Review Board’s latest estimates, the total amount owed by cities, counties, school districts, and special districts rose to nearly $552 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2025. Shockingly, that massive sum is more than $52 billion higher than the prior year’s amount. Once again, independent school districts (ISDs) were the most heavily indebted type of political subdivision,...
A Texas program aims to improve civic literacy in underserved communities. At a time when we Americans routinely worry about the health of our civic culture, the U.S. Department of Education has made a notable investment. Earlier this month, the department approved a $1.9-million grant for The American Civic Tradition at 250, a joint initiative of Texas...
Recent concerns surrounding a planned Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District (GCISD) event have ignited a broader and long-overdue conversation about who—and what—local officials and leaders are allowing into Texas public schools. The district recently acknowledged that Colleyville Heritage High School facilities were rented for the May 9–10 Dallas Islamic Games, an annual multi-age sports tournament organized...
If economist Friedrich Hayek taught us to as who ought to decide, and Abraham Lincoln taught us to as to what end, then the question of immigration compels us to ask a third and inescapable question: Where is the line drawn? In the instance of Minneapolis, the line is both wrongly drawn, and drawn at...
At a Jan. 13 conference hosted by the Holy See and the Italian Ministry for Family, Birth Rate, and Equal Opportunities, the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Gallagher offered sharp criticisms of surrogacy, the practice of a surrogate mother carrying a pregnancy for another person (“commissioning parent”). While surrogacy may help...
Mexico received $64 billion from US last year while some countries depend on remittances for 25% of GDP. The State Department’s recent decision to freeze visa processing for nationals from more than 75 countries — including Somalia, Iran and Russia — reflects a growing recognition in Washington: large-scale migration is no longer viewed solely as a humanitarian...
It didn’t take long for Grapevine-Colleyville ISD and Cy-Fair ISD to back off their offer of the use of public school facilities to host the so-called “Islamic Games,” once it was revealed that one of the sponsors was the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has linked to foreign terrorists. What’s...