WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar is claiming some credit for Texas’ controversial buoys to prevent migrants from crossing the Rio Grande, saying he pitched the idea to Border Patrol years ago.

The conservative Democrat said in a recent interview with Newsweek that he made the pitch to Border Patrol to prevent migrants from claiming asylum by setting foot on U.S. territory.

“I said, if you put a wall in Texas in the river, you're about a quarter mile away. So when somebody crosses and touches the riverbanks, they can claim asylum,” Cuellar told the news magazine.

In a brief interview with The Texas Tribune, Cuellar added that the idea didn’t go anywhere at the time because the International Boundary and Water Commission didn’t give the necessary permits. But he was enthusiastic about an alternative to a land-based border wall in his district.

Gov. Greg Abbott deployed buoys and razor wire on the border last year to deter migrants from crossing the Rio Grande. Dozens of people have died trying to cross the river in recent years. Then-Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador criticized the tactics last year after a body was reported on one of the buoys.

Texas Democrats in Congress, including Cuellar, sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging his administration to investigate Abbott’s actions under Operation Lone Star, including the use of razor wire and buoys on the Rio Grande. The letter asserts the buoys and razor wire are “potentially illegal and may violate multiple bilateral treaties” designating water rights between the United States and Mexico. Every Democrat in Texas’ congressional delegation at the time signed onto the letter.

Cuellar, who has represented the 28th Congressional District since 2005, expressed similar concerns during a press conference in 2023 about Operation Lone Star, where he said the buoys could change the border if there is flooding and that Border Patrol agents have expressed concerns that the razor wire can impede them.

“We need to have border security, but at the same time, we have to respect the rights and the dignity of the migrants who are trying to come into the U.S.,” Cuellar said at the news conference. “One of the things that we’ve asked the state and that I’ve asked the federal government is, are we coordinating with the state, and it looks like the state is going solo on this.”

Speaking with The Texas Tribune, Cuellar said he was not opposed to the use of buoys, but he signed onto the 2023 letter in opposition to the state’s unilateral use of the barriers without working with the federal government. He said he was optimistic the state will work with the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump on hardening the border.

Cuellar also said he didn’t want to take credit away from Abbott for deploying the buoys.

“I’m not taking anything from Governor Abbott,” Cuellar said. “I congratulate him.”

Cuellar is among the most conservative Democrats in Congress and has occasionally crossed over to support Republican efforts on border security. He helped launch a Democratic task force on border security earlier this year.

He has recently shown openness to working with Trump’s administration, saying he saw opportunities for “common ground” with Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar. Homan served as director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during Trump’s first term. The pair plans to meet sometime next week. Cuellar said he could see an agreement with the Trump administration on working with Mexico to keep migrants from reaching the U.S. border.

Cuellar remains politically battered, reeling from a federal indictment charging him with bribery, money laundering and working on behalf of the Azerbaijani government and a Mexican bank. He has denied the allegations and won reelection in November by 5.6 percentage points. He won reelection in 2022 by more than 10 points.

Republicans declined to heavily fund a challenge against Cuellar this year despite the indictment, which came out after the first round of the district’s Republican primary. But South Texas remains a major target for the party, and national Republicans have telegraphed they are keeping their sights on the district in the future.

Cuellar’s trial is set to begin next spring in Houston, in which more details of his alleged criminal activity are expected to be aired out. He is charged with accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes to advance the interests of Azerbaijan’s oil and gas sector and the business interests of Banco Azteca. He is accused of setting up money-laundering schemes to conceal the bribes with the help of his wife, Imelda. Cuellar said his behavior was in line with other members of Congress.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/04/henry-cuellar-texas-rio-grande-border-buoys-immigration/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Eight years ago, when conservative state lawmakers tried to restrict what bathrooms trans people could use, moderate Republicans quietly killed the bill in a special session.

Less than a decade later, that seems like a distant memory. The far-right now has the Legislature firmly in its grip and, emboldened by the recent election, they’re gearing up to make growing trans animus the social issue of the session.

[After Texas banned puberty blockers and hormones for trans kids, adults lost care, too]

Nationwide, Republicans have successfully pushed these laws as a way to protect children, by prohibiting them from medically transitioning before they turn 18 and stopping trans students from playing on sports teams that don’t align with their biological sex.

Texas has so far marched in lockstep with its conservative cousins in passing laws aimed at children. But some lawmakers want to further restrict the lives of trans adults as well, filing bills about bathroom use, gender identity markers on official documents and funding for gender reassignment surgery.

“The American people and especially Texans that I represent, they’ve had enough of it,” Rep. Brian Harrison, an arch-conservative from Midlothian, told The Texas Tribune. “They’re forcing you to celebrate something that’s at odds with objective reality, and in many instances, forcing tax dollars to fund it.”

The limit on how far Texas will go on this issue lies in the hands of conservative lawmakers, as the state is unlikely to face federal pushback as they did during the Biden administration. Incoming President Donald Trump has vowed to get Congress to pass a bill declaring there are only two genders, and to keep “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.”

“I don’t see any reason the state would moderate its position at this point,” said Andrew Proctor, a political science professor at the University of Chicago who studies LGBTQ political issues. “If anything, the things they want to pursue will be easier now.”

A message is born

In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, and conservatives began casting around for a new social issue to back. They landed on the small but growing trans population, and the incremental discrimination protections they’d gained during the Obama administration.

The next year, in 2017, there were a few dozen anti-trans bills filed in state houses across the country. Many, like Texas' bathroom bill, failed. At that time, 57% of Republicans said society had gone “too far” in accepting trans people.

Then, they honed in on children. Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, a right-wing political advocacy group, helped shape the messaging around this issue. He said conservatives are willing to be “polite” to people who identify as trans — to a point.

“Once you go into my daughter's athletics or in her locker room or showers, once you start giving kids gender transitions that mutilate them and sterilize them, then we're in a whole different world,” he told The Texas Tribune after the election.

All major medical associations acknowledge that gender dysphoria, the distress someone can feel when their physical presentation doesn’t match the gender they identify as, is a real medical condition best treated with gender-affirming care. That can range from social transition, in which someone goes by different pronouns or dresses differently, to medical treatments, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgeries. Minors rarely undergo surgery to transition, and all decisions are made in consultation with their parents and medical professionals.

Nonetheless, the conservative messaging resonated. Last year, almost 80% of Republicans said society had gone too far in accepting trans people, and this year, even with Texas laying dormant, there were 669 anti-trans bills filed in state legislatures across the country.

But despite this sharp increase in anti-trans sentiment, it’s not entirely clear what Americans want their government to do about it. More than half of Republicans do not want to ban gender-affirming care for minors, and almost as many want to protect trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.

Texas’ ban on gender-affirming care for minors was widely condemned by medical associations, doctors, advocates and trans people, who called the laws “dangerous,” “cruel and grotesque,” and “devastating.” Every Republican, and a handful of Democrats, voted for the ban.

Now, trans people, advocates and health care providers are bracing for what comes next.

“It's almost necessary, based on their framework and the way they frame these cases, that they would argue that access to care for adults would be a violation in the same way as for children,” said Elana Redfield, the federal policy director at the Williams Institute, a research center on gender identity law and public policy at the University of California Los Angeles. “Texas has already made it pretty clear they intend to do that.”

The next frontier

In 2024, an off year for the Texas Legislature, other Republican states charged ahead, setting the agenda for what lawmakers might do when they reconvene in January. No state has fully banned adults from accessing gender-affirming care, but some, such as Florida, have significantly restricted the provision of these treatments, discouraging doctors and patients alike.

Texas lawmakers are already filing bills to tee up these issues. Sen. Bob Hall, a Republican from Edgewood, and Rep. Ellen Troxclair, an Austin Republican, have filed bills requiring government records to reflect that there are only two genders, tightly defining male and female based on reproductive organs. Other bills would prevent trans people from amending their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity.

These laws have the effect of “erasing transgender people altogether,” Redfield said. Some of this is already under way: Earlier this year, the Texas Department of Public Safety, under scrutiny from Attorney General Ken Paxton, began refusing to change the sex listed on someone’s driver’s license, even with a court order. The agency also began compiling names of people seeking the change.

Lawmakers are also hoping to resurrect the bathroom issue, as well as requiring trans people to be placed in jails or prisons based on the sex they were assigned at birth.

Harrison, the Midlothian Republican, has filed a bill that would forbid state funding to be used for transition-related care.

This idea gained traction during the presidential election, when Trump accused Vice President Kamala Harris of supporting taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery. In a small number of cases, federal inmates have won court battles that required the federal government to pay for their transition-related medical care.

Harrison said his focus is purely about how tax dollars are spent, and it’s the media who portrays these as social issues.

“We are making the lives harder for Texans of all stripes when we make them poorer, and we certainly shouldn’t make them poorer in the pursuit of leftist ideology,” he said.

Federal shifts

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging Tennessee’s gender-affirming care ban for minors, a case that could determine how far states like Texas can go with these restrictions. The U.S. Department of Justice sued in 2023, saying the law unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of gender.

The suit was one of several attempts by the Biden administration to insulate trans people from the impacts of conservative state laws.

“The Biden administration has been the most explicitly protective administration for transgender people,” Redfield said. “We can anticipate the incoming president will claw back as much of that as possible.”

In his first term, Trump ejected trans people from the military and reversed many Obama-era discrimination protections. In his recent presidential campaign, he ran heavily on this record, culminating in an ad that said “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”

Project 2025, the policy blueprint created by the conservative Heritage Foundation that many hope Trump will pull from, calls for removing “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” from all federal rules, regulations and legislation, and restricting gender-affirming care across age groups.

Trans people and advocates are preparing for what Congress and the White House might do, as well as where state legislatures might go without federal oversight to rein them in. Many groups are recommending trans people proactively change their government documents to align with their gender identity, where that’s still allowed; stock up on transition-related medications; and prepare to move states or leave the country, if needed.

Whatever Trump does on this issue, Texas is expected to go even further.

“Texas better do at least as good a job as Washington, D.C. is going to do on that front,” Harrison said. “And that’s what I’m committed to ensuring happens.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/04/texas-transgender-restrictions-legislative-session/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

JOHNSON COUNTY — Tony Coleman recognizes the signs all too well. A cow drools strings of saliva. Then it starts to limp, each step slower. Then it grows stiff.

Then it’s quick. There’s nothing to be done. The cow dies.

Since early 2023, the Grandview rancher has watched more than 35 of his 150 Black Angus cattle perish. July was especially brutal. In the span of a week, Coleman lost a 3-week-old calf; a cow; and Little Red, a strong bull full of spirit, leaving Coleman with nothing but unanswered questions.

“This is destroying our lives,” Coleman said. “You never know what you're going to get every day when you get down here.”

Next door, James Farmer has lost two calves, and found two of his wife’s beloved horses toppled to the ground like dominos, their bodies swarmed by buzzards.

“It's hard for me to tell her, because I know she's gonna break down,” he said. “Why are our animals dying? Just back to back? It never ends.”

Months before, the men said they noticed a gag-inducing sewage smell drifting from smoking piles of fertilizer on their neighbor’s property. Heavy rains then washed some of the fertilizer onto their land. Soon after, they said they found fish floating dead in the stock ponds their livestock drink from.

The Colemans have lost more than 35 animals. One went blind before dying, they said, a white film coating the pupil. A pair of calves died less than a week after birth. They found dead fish floating in their stock ponds. When an animal dies it's a race against time. Coleman and his neighbor James Farmer scramble to beat the buzzards and coyotes to the carcass, then drive it to a lab in College Station. Credit: Courtesy of Tony and Karen Coleman

They contacted the county with their concerns, triggering a nine-month investigation. That’s when their cattle and horses began to die.

An environmental crime investigator in Johnson County collected samples of the dead animals’ tissue and organs, the water they drank from, the soil and the fertilizer that was applied next door.

After the county received test results, the two families finally got their answer: The animals had been killed by something in the fertilizer.

The fertilizer had been made with biosolids, part of an effort to find a climate-friendly method to recycle municipal sewage. But the fertilizer also contained synthetic and highly hazardous chemicals known as PFAS, which are found in hundreds of household products and have had devastating effects on farms and ranches that inadvertently spread them on their land.

An untold number of farms and ranches across Texas and the rest of the nation may have also used fertilizer made from sewage tainted with these “forever chemicals” — which don’t break down in the environment — without knowing it.

PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are man-made chemicals used since the 1940s that have a singular ability to repel oil and water and resist heat. They are used in products like nonstick cookware, pizza boxes, waterproof mascara, toilet paper, soaps and rain jackets.

There are more than 12,000 types of PFAS, but researchers have only studied the health effects of roughly 150. They can contaminate food and water and build up in the body over time. Exposure to certain PFAS has been linked to cancer, low birth rates and birth defects, damage to the liver and immune system, and other serious health problems. One study found the chemicals in the blood of nearly 97% of all Americans.

Due to their widespread use in consumer products, forever chemicals have been discharged into waterways by chemical manufacturers, trucked to landfills with household trash or flushed into city sewers via toilets, sinks, showers and washing machines.

Then they end up in local wastewater treatment plants where the solids are separated from sewage. Fertilizer companies who are often paid to haul these biosolids away process them into fertilizer that’s sold to farmers and ranchers as a cheaper alternative to chemical fertilizers.

A number of Texas wastewater plants have contracts with fertilizer companies to take their biosolids, including Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Arlington. Nationally, more than half of sewage sludge was treated and spread on land, according to one study; 19 billion pounds of it was spread on American farms between 2016 and 2021, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found in 2022.

Wastewater treatment and biosolids experts call this an environmental win-win because those solids don’t go to landfills or incinerators — processes that create greenhouse gasses, which contribute to climate change.

But nobody knows how much of that fertilizer is contaminated with PFAS, which can be absorbed by crops, consumed by livestock, and then enter the food supply. There are no requirements to test biosolids for PFAS, or to warn farmers and ranchers that they could be using contaminated fertilizer made with biosolids on their land.

“Some people are saying, [PFAS contamination] are isolated incidents. No, they're not. I guarantee that this is a problem in every single state that uses biosolids,” said Kyla Bennett, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency employee who is now a science policy director for the nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

“The reason we're not hearing about it all over the country, in all 50 states, is because nobody's looking for this problem,” Bennett added.

According to EPA data analyzed by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group in 2022, an estimated 5% of all crop fields in the U.S. — up to 20 million acres — could have used fertilizer made with biosolids. In Texas, more than 157,000 dry metric tons of biosolids-based fertilizer were applied to agricultural lands in 2018.

While the EPA recently set limits for a handful of the chemicals in drinking water, those rules do not cover biosolids.

“The evidence is out there” that PFAS are a health hazard, Bennett said. “We shouldn’t have to wait [for the EPA to act].”

Without federal regulations, some states have taken action, requiring wastewater treatment plants to test their biosolids for PFAS or setting their own limits for PFAS in biosolids. Texas is not among them. State environmental regulators said in a statement they’re not required to by law.

Karen said her dad’s farm land doesn't feel the same anymore — the PFAS has cast a shadow on it. If they sold any cattle, she said, it would feel like a betrayal of her father's memory. She’s relying on her faith as a moral compass to guide her — even if it means hard choices. “We believe in Jesus. And at the end of my time, when I have to stand in front of Jesus and I get to see my dad again, I have to answer for the decisions that we're making right now,” Karen Coleman said." src="https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/935W7LMmANadeSFImmtI1n08od8=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/a97d6e6fd014bd6ee2e0cab002d0038f/Colemans%20and%20Ranch%20AS%20TT%2001.jpg">

Tony Coleman took over the farm in 2018 after his wife’s father died from liver cancer. Karen Coleman said the farm doesn't feel the same anymore — the PFAS contamination has cast a shadow over it. If they sold cattle now, she said, it would feel like a betrayal of her father's memory. “We believe in Jesus. And at the end of my time, when I have to stand in front of Jesus and I get to see my dad again, I have to answer for the decisions that we're making right now,” she said. Credit: Azul Sordo for The Texas Tribune

Coleman and other Johnson County farmers who know their land is contaminated are now faced with an existential dilemma: Do they sell their cattle and their crops, knowing they’re likely laced with PFAS, or face financial ruin?

Coleman and Farmer have both decided not to sell any cattle. That means the men now run zombie farms. They pay to feed animals and harvest hay that they won’t sell — a single 900-pound steer could sell for $4,800, Coleman said.

“Everything we plant here is just sucking this [PFAS] stuff up,” Coleman said. “The cows drink the water and eat the grass. For them there is no escaping.”

Anxiety in Johnson County

The Johnson County Courthouse in downtown Cleburne on July 29, 2024. Credit: Azul Sordo for The Texas Tribune

In February, Johnson County residents packed the courthouse and listened intently as Dana Ames, an environmental crime investigator for the county, and other local officials explained the findings from the nine-month investigation into the noxious smells and dead livestock.

Ames, who spent $35,000 of the county’s money on the investigation and sent samples to a lab in Pennsylvania, told residents that the liver of the Coleman’s stillborn calf contained 610,000 parts per trillion of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, one of the many types of forever chemicals.

The tissue from a calf belonging to Farmer that died a week after being born tested at 320 ppt of PFOS.

Currently, there are no federal food safety standards for PFAS. In Maine, which in 2016 became the first state to detect PFAS contamination at a farm, state officials issued limits for beef containing PFOS at 3.4 parts per billion and milk containing PFOS at 210 parts per trillion — meaning that beef or milk exceeding these levels should be considered unsafe for consumption. Maine, which has discovered 78 contaminated farms and shut five of them down, has been the only state to set its own PFAS limits for food.

Samples of the pond water where the ranching families’ livestock drink from ranged from 84 ppt to 1,333 ppt of PFAS.

The county also tested the fertilizer their neighbor spread on his farm and found 27 types of PFAS chemicals, including four out of the five the EPA has set limits for in drinking water.

Johnson County Commissioner Larry Woolley at his desk in Cleburne. Credit: Azul Sordo for The Texas Tribune

“These people were led to believe this was safe and a cheap fertilizer,” County Commissioner Larry Woolley said at the meeting. “And this isn’t just isolated to this one incident or multiple counties. This is going on all over.”

“The amount of beef and milk that’s gone into the food chain, who knows what their PFAS levels are? The level of victimization is widespread,” he added.

The Colemans, Farmer and four other local farmers have sued Synagro, the Maryland-based company that produced the biosolids-based fertilizer applied on their neighbor’s fields, and Renda Environmental, a Texas-based fertilizer company that sold to the neighbor before Synagro. The lawsuit claims the companies knew about the contaminants in the fertilizer and failed to provide adequate warnings to its customers.

Synagro denies the allegations. Kip Cleverley, a spokesperson with the company, said the company did its own testing on the land where the fertilizer was applied and preliminary results found PFAS levels in the single digits parts per trillion in the surface water. The company did not provide its test results to the Tribune, saying its analysis was still in progress.

“The data strongly suggests that the farm where biosolids were used could not be a source for the PFAS allegedly found on the plaintiffs’ farms,” Cleverley said.

Renda Environmental told the Tribune the company does not comment on pending litigation.

In a separate lawsuit filed against the EPA in June by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility on behalf of the farmers, the group claimed the agency failed to implement restrictions on PFAS in biosolids despite knowing the health risks posed by the chemicals. Johnson County later joined the suit.

“My heart breaks [for the farmers],” said Bennett, the group's science policy director. “It could be years until the EPA sets biosolids regulations. Somebody needs to hold their feet to the fire … farmers are losing their livelihoods.”

The biosolids used to create the fertilizer that allegedly contaminated the Colemans’ and Farmers’ farms came from Fort Worth’s Village Creek Water Reclamation Facility, which treats sewage from 1 million people, many industries and 23 communities in North Texas. It generates between 27,000 to 31,000 tons of biosolids per year.

Top right: Mary Gugliuzza, spokesperson for Fort Worth Water said the wastewater treatment plant is “passive receivers” of forever chemicals, meaning they don’t produce them at the treatment plant, but come into the wastewater treatment plant from residential homes, commercial businesses, institutions, and in some cases industrial users.

Bottom left: People flush all sorts of things containing PFAS down the toilet, including wipes, menstrual products, rocks, toys, sticks and plastic. During the first step of the wastewater treatment process, raw sewage passes through screens, which helps remove the trash. It then pushes it through a chute, goes into the conveyor belt and falls into the dumpsters. All trash is taken to a landfill.

Bottom right: Air is pumped into pools filled with wastewater known as aeration basins. The water looks like it’s boiling from oxygen being fed into it. One expert linked it to a fish tank with a bubbler at the bottom pushing oxygen. The oxygen promotes microbial growth that helps break down pollutants, nitrogen, and phosphorus, which creates an earthy smell." src="https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/G4Ul6Oav7w7Yn7DO4lwryGKGNU4=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/45d4d67099e72516645d2258d8f373ff/Village%20Creek%20ENS%20TT%2001.jpg">

Top left: In one of the last steps in the wastewater treatment process, the wastewater is injected with chlorine to kill any remaining bacteria. Fort Worth Water sends the recycled water to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport for industrial use.

Top right: Mary Gugliuzza, spokesperson for Fort Worth Water, said forever chemicals enter the wastewater treatment plant from homes, businesses and industrial customers.

Bottom left: The first step of the wastewater treatment process involves sending raw sewage through screens to remove trash.

Bottom right: Air is pumped into wastewater pools known as aeration basins, where oxygen promotes microbial growth that helps break down pollutants. Credit: Erika Nina Suarez for the Texas Tribune

Mary Gugliuzza, spokesperson for Fort Worth Water, said the fertilizer pellets produced by Synagro meet EPA and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality requirements.

Gugliuzza added the city had tested some of its biosolids for PFAS even though it’s not required. Those results showed PFAS in the biosolids, but Gugliuzza said that’s the case at wastewater facilities across the country.

Synagro has contracts with more than 1,000 municipal wastewater plants, industrial, and agricultural customers in North America — including Fort Worth — to turn biosolids, which one employee described as resembling chocolate milk, into fertilizer that it markets as nutrient rich and environmentally friendly.

In 2022 Synagro processed 6.5 million tons of biosolids nationwide.

“The [EPA] has not suggested that any changes in biosolids management is required because of the presence of trace amounts of PFAS,” Cleverly, the company spokesperson, said.

In September, the EPA responded to the lawsuit saying it has complete discretion over which pollutants to regulate under federal law — so it can't be sued.

But the agency is now studying the presence of PFAS in wastewater and sewage sludge nationally and conducting a risk assessment on the use of biosolids and sewage sludge containing the two most widely used and studied forever chemicals — PFOA and PFOS — focusing on health risks through exposure to soil, water, crops, meat and dairy. It expects to publish the results by the end of this year, which will determine whether new federal rules are necessary.

Who should be responsible for removing forever chemicals?

In the wastewater treatment process at the San Antonio Water System’s Steven M. Clouse Water Recycling Center, final clarifiers are used to separate the treated water from the remaining solids. Credit: Chris Stokes for The Texas Tribune

In Texas, most biosolids end up in a landfill. But the rest is diverted for agricultural use in Texas.

At San Antonio’s wastewater treatment plant, water is removed from sewage sludge by using a machine that squeezes it between two tensioned belts or by spreading it in drying beds so the sun evaporates the moisture. Once it’s dried to a crumb-like texture, the biosolids are piled into black mountains then transported to other facilities where two Texas compost companies turn it into fertilizer.

Pitched as a cost-effective way to improve soil fertility, biosolids have been applied to land in the U.S. since the 1970s. Scientists say they contain nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium that helps plants grow.

The EPA only requires wastewater treatment plants to test biosolids for heavy metals and pathogens that can be harmful to health.

Sand drying uses rectangular sand beds where sewage sludge is spread and left to dry using sunlight. Heat from the sun evaporates the moisture from the sludge. Once dried, it looks like a crumbly material." src="https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/lhgyh7J28SMdqRw6Tyj7KX-o6x8=/1200x804/smart/filters:quality(75)/https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/9278cd062732954927704ee5a24a3f6d/Wastewater%20Process%20CS%20TT%2001.jpg">

The two most common ways to dry sewage sludge are by passing it through a belt presser — which presses the sludge between two belts to squeeze out the water — or in drying beds. Sludge spread over sand beds dries into a crumbly material after the sun's heat evaporates the moisture. Credit: Chris Stokes for The Texas Tribune

If the EPA issues new restrictions on PFAS in biosolids, utilities fear they are likely to bear the responsibility for removing the chemicals from wastewater.

“If we are required to treat a particular chemical that is not covered in the way you already treat, you have to design a whole new system,” said Ed Guzman, the senior vice president and chief legal and ethics officer at the San Antonio Water System. “You have to put it in place and that all takes time. It takes money.”

The cost of removal is significant: A 2023 report by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency found that it would cost between $2.7 million and $18 million per pound to remove and destroy PFAS from municipal wastewater, depending on facility size, and between $1 million and $2.7 million per pound of PFAS removed from biosolids.

Adam Krantz, the CEO of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, a group representing municipal wastewater treatment agencies, said the cost of remediation could be passed down to water utility customers, but argues that "polluters should pay."“It really is the corporate polluter that needs to foot the bill for this as the wrongdoer,” he said.

Others, like Janine Burke-Wells, executive director for the North East Biosolids & Residuals Association, which represents wastewater treatment facilities and biosolids producers, said that the responsibility to curb PFAS should fall on everyone.

“Unless we really eliminate all the sources of PFAS there's always going to be a background level because [PFAS] is in everything,” Burke-Wells said.

One county doing what it can

County Commissioner Larry Woolley drives past PFAS-affected land in Grandview on July 29, 2024. Credit: Azul Sordo for The Texas Tribune

In Johnson County, Woolley drives his silver pickup down rural roads, pointing out hay bales and miles of milo grain, corn and wheat — crops the county commissioner says have been blessed by heavy rainfall earlier this year.

Woolley, a former agriculture teacher who moved to Grandivew in 1982, says he’s spent sleepless nights worrying about PFAS’ impacts on ranching families in this county of 180,000 residents.

“I lay awake at night thinking of the magnitude of this whole deal. It’s just crazy,” Woolley said. “This is just the tip of the iceberg. I think there's gonna be so much public outcry on this … it's gonna be hard for our state officials to ignore that.”

Following the county’s investigation, Woolley led the charge to pass a local resolution urging farmers to stop using biosolids on their land.

The resolution called for Fort Worth to stop sending its biosolids to fertilizer companies until the TCEQ tests them for the presence of PFAS and asked the EPA to set limits on PFAS in biosolids. The resolution also called on state lawmakers to regulate the application of biosolids-based fertilizer on farmland or give power to counties to do so.

“That’s the hard part,” Woolley said. “We don’t have authority to ban biosolids.”

In July, neighboring Ellis County passed a similar resolution calling for regulation and legislation to restrict the application of biosolids on farms and ranches until further testing is done. Since then, Kaufman, Henderson, Somervell and Wise counties have done the same.

Woolley has traveled around the state to sound the alarm about PFAS at conferences for county officials. He said he and his staff are preparing to go to Austin to meet with state lawmakers during the next legislative session. He hopes they will introduce new bills that will address PFAS contamination in biosolids, including giving counties money to test for the contaminants, and require TCEQ to test biosolids statewide for forever chemicals.

So far, there have been no bills filed by state lawmakers regarding PFAS contamination in biosolids ahead of the legislative session that begins in January.

In 2021, Michigan began requiring all municipal wastewater treatment plants to test their biosolids for PFAS before spreading them on agricultural land. The state also began prohibiting the application of biosolids containing more than 150 parts per billion of PFOS on agricultural land. Since then, the state has lowered that threshold to 100 ppb and added another type of PFAS to the list, PFOA.

What experts refer to as the "Michigan model" has now been embraced by other states including California, Wisconsin and Washington. Connecticut and Maine have banned the use of biosolids on agricultural fields.

Ellen Mallory, a professor of sustainable agriculture at The University of Maine, said state response has been crucial given the lack of standards at the federal level.

“The important part here is it's really hard to have any response to PFAS contamination if we don't have any standards. So a state like Texas that has no standards, what do you do? How do you help farmers determine if their food is safe or not?” she said.

Meanwhile, Tony Coleman and his wife are still watching their livestock die. They pack dead cattle in a big cooler, load them onto a trailer and drive 140 miles to a laboratory at College Station where vet technicians perform a necropsy and remove tissue to be tested for PFAS.

The couple both work two jobs and are looking for a third. They're worried they have lost the ability to make a living off their own land.

“We can't consciously sell you a side of beef and then you eat it and you get sick. What kind of people does that make us?” Coleman said.

Disclosure: San Antonio Water System has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Tony Coleman pets "Tank," a bull they raised and bottle-fed as a calf on their property in Grandview on Aug. 5, 2024. Credit: Azul Sordo for The Texas Tribune

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/12/02/texas-farmers-pfas-forever-chemicals-biosolids-fertilizer/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Last year, state Rep. David Cook of Mansfield was quietly but steadily climbing the ranks of Texas politics.

The sophomore lawmaker had been named vice chair of the committee overseeing the state’s criminal laws. He carried and passed a GOP priority bill aimed at reining in “rogue” progressive district attorneys. And he had a coveted seat on the powerful Calendars Committee, which acts as the House gatekeeper because it controls which bills reach the floor for a vote and which never see the light of day.

Cook’s promising start was a clear indication House Speaker Dade Phelan considered him an ally.

Then, in September, Cook made an audacious gambit by announcing he would join an increasingly crowded field challenging Phelan for the speaker’s gavel. By the end of that month, Cook emerged as the consensus pick of the anti-Phelan House Republicans to replace the sitting speaker.

In announcing his run for speaker, Cook said that political infighting, breakdowns in communication and a lack of transparency from Phelan had hindered the Republican majority’s work. He promised to engage regularly with lawmakers if elected.

“My philosophy is rooted in returning power to the members and fostering an environment where we can work together effectively,” he said.

Cook, whose voting record placed him near the ideological middle of the House Republicans, is an unlikely choice to be standard-bearer for a coalition looking to oust Phelan on the grounds that he is too moderate. The group is dominated by social conservatives from the chamber’s rightmost flank, many of whom opposed Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment last year or won their seats by defeating members like Cook who had supported it.

They want to further disempower the House’s Democratic minority by putting Republicans in charge of every legislative committee. They also want to speed the passage of conservative legislation and ensure that major GOP bills reach the floor before any Democratic measures.

On paper, other GOP candidates who’d announced challenges to Phelan appeared more representative of the insurgent crowd, including Rep. Shelby Slawson of Stephenville, one of the House’s most conservative members, and Rep. John Smithee of Amarillo, who won plaudits from the far right for vigorously opposing Paxton’s impeachment.

“If you’re a reformer, I’m not sure how they settled on him,” said Rep. Carl Tepper, R-Lubbock, a Phelan supporter.

Now, Cook and Phelan are waging a behind-the-scenes battle for control of the Texas House, each projecting confidence that they have a path to victory despite shaky public support.

In early December, the House GOP Caucus is scheduled to meet to settle on their endorsed nominee for speaker. Under the group’s rules — which are occasionally disregarded by members — whoever gets 60% or more of the votes at the meeting will be the caucus’ endorsed candidate and should receive support from all Republican members when the vote goes to the full House.

Phelan, a Beaumont Republican who has served as speaker for two terms and a House member since 2015, insists he has enough votes to lead the chamber for a third time in January — but he has not produced a list of supporters. Cook is touting 47 Republicans who would back him, short of the threshold required to gain the endorsement of the House GOP Caucus and far short of the 76 lawmakers from either party he would need to win the real speaker’s election on the House floor in January.

His allies remain hopeful that enough Republicans will buckle under the pressure of drawing a career-threatening primary challenge from Phelan’s deep-pocketed political foes if they lend their support to the incumbent speaker. But that threat has not produced any new pledges for Cook since he announced his initial list of supporters, signaling that Phelan could keep the gavel with backing from the chamber’s 62 Democrats and a minority of the Republican caucus.

Cook and Phelan both declined comment for this story.

The caucus meeting is a pivotal moment for Cook’s bid. The 53-year-old lawmaker will either emerge as the clear frontrunner to lead the chamber or potentially be relegated to the doghouse next session for challenging the sitting speaker.

“A coalition builder”

Cook’s roots in the Texas Capitol go back more than 30 years to 1993 when he got his start as a legislative aide for conservative Democrat Rep. Jerry Johnson of Nacogdoches while attending Stephen F. Austin State University.

But his biggest mentor and influence in the Legislature was the late Republican Sen. Chris Harris of Arlington, whom he worked for as an aide in the mid-1990s. The two became law partners at Harris’ family and business law firm, where Cook now works as managing partner.

As a lawyer in Tarrant County, Cook was able to rub elbows with movers and shakers in Texas’ largest Republican county who could help him launch a political career.

In 2008, he won his first election for mayor of Mansfield, a suburb south of Arlington with about 50,000 residents. During his 12 years at the helm, the city’s population grew by more than 40%, part of the explosive growth seen throughout the North Texas suburbs.

Larry Broseh, a longtime Mansfield city council member, said Cook helped usher the city out of its “sleepy, bedroom community era” into a booming suburb marked by mixed-use developments and a growing web of master-planned communities.

He began to show some of the hallmarks of how he would govern as a state legislator, focusing on a conservative approach to the city’s finances and promoting economic growth, over culture wars.

“He was definitely a coalition builder,” Broseh said, describing how the seven-person council typically decided matters with 7-0 or 6-1 votes. “I’ve worked with four mayors throughout my tenure, and by far I think he was the most collaborative person.”

Broseh said he was “surprised as much as the next person” when he heard that Cook was challenging Phelan, in part because Cook had left City Hall for the Capitol so recently. But Broseh contended that Cook’s ability to build alliances and find common ground — underscored by his work as a family law mediator — would serve him well in the race.

In late 2019, Cook launched a primary challenge against longtime Arlington Rep. Bill Zedler, a staunch social conservative and member of the Texas House Freedom Caucus. Zedler bowed out of the race, citing health concerns, and Cook went on to win the seat in 2020.

In his first session the following year, he filed 10 bills, several of which dealt with family law. He passed his first law, making it easier to modify child support and other family legal orders — his only bill to reach the governor’s desk that year.

Cook was more productive during his second term in 2023, when Phelan named him vice chair of the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee and placed him on the Calendars Committee.

That year he filed 69 bills and passed 14 of them, including the Republican priority that allowed courts to remove district attorneys for misconduct if they did not pursue certain types of crimes. The bill, which was signed into law and took effect last September, targets progressive prosecutors in large urban counties who have declined to pursue low-level marijuana possession cases and vowed not to prosecute abortion-related crimes.

Last year, Cook also took two of the most consequential votes of his short legislative career. Near the end of the spring regular session, he was one of 60 House Republicans who voted to impeach Paxton for allegedly accepting bribes and abusing the power of his office, charges on which he was later acquitted by the Senate. Cook was the only member to note in the House record after the vote that he supported some — but not all — of the articles of impeachment.

Later that year, Cook sided with Gov. Greg Abbott’s bid to enact a private school voucher program, voting against an amendment that stripped vouchers from a broader education bill.

Those two votes paved the way for an ugly primary season. To vote for impeachment meant Paxton’s far-right allies were coming for your seat. To vote against vouchers meant that Abbott and a lineup of pro-voucher groups might spend millions to oust you. Despite his impeachment vote, Cook managed to avoid a primary challenge, which kept his name out of the headlines during a period of intraparty mudslinging.

Why Cook?

Capitol observers and legislative colleagues said Cook tends to push his bills through quietly, steering clear of the bomb-throwing tactics intended to attract attention and rile controversy.

Bill Miller, a veteran Austin-based lobbyist, described Cook as “a watcher and absorber” with a tendency to keep his cards close to his vest. He said Cook’s style is reminiscent of former House Speaker Joe Straus, who also emerged from the background after just two terms to challenge an incumbent speaker.

“He’s one of the members, I put him in the category of people, they’re smart, they pay attention, and they keep their own counsel,” he said.

Cook sometimes sided with Phelan’s team to beat back ideas pushed by the right wing of the GOP.

Last year, he voted with Republicans and Democrats to redo a vote on a bill that would give tax breaks to businesses that bring jobs to Texas, after some of his far-right colleagues snuck in an amendment targeting transgender health care and abortion access. He later supported the bill’s passage when the amendment was removed.

Cook also supported legislation to legalize sports gambling, which many social conservatives, including some of those now in his camp, oppose.

Luke Macias, a consultant to some of the state’s most socially conservative legislators, said focusing the race on Cook’s record is a mistake.

“The coalition that’s formed has formed around how the House operates,” he said. “It’s not formed around a personality on either side but on structurally changing the Texas House in a way that’s better for every single member.”

On top of removing Democrats from leadership positions, the anti-Phelan coalition also wants the speaker to ensure Republican priorities receive floor votes early in the session, among other demands laid out in their manifesto called the “Contract with Texas,” to which Cook has committed.

Rep. Tony Tinderholt, R-Arlington, said Cook’s decision to sign onto that pledge, which was drafted by lawmakers pushing for a new speaker, was a major factor in deciding to support him. Tinderholt, one of the chamber’s most hard-right conservatives who is often at odds with House leadership, said he doesn’t always agree with Cook on policy but likes that he treats other House members with respect.

“This quality in David is what makes him a good consensus candidate to unite Republicans,” Tinderholt said in an email. “His governing philosophy is in the middle of our caucus and his track record of treating members with dignity and respect is impeccable.”

Rep. Ellen Troxclair, a Lakeway Republican who is one of Cook’s core supporters, said he won her over in part by showing her and other freshman members respect despite their lack of seniority.

“In an atmosphere that tended to tell freshmen to keep their heads down and mouths shut, David had the opposite approach, where he really wanted to help the new class be successful,” Troxclair said. “I know that was appreciated not just by me but by my other classmates who had similar experiences.”

Cook’s public support has stalled since the late September meeting after which he put out a list of 48 supporters. That number has dropped to 47 after one of his pledges, Republican Steve Kinard of Collin County, lost his challenge to Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Democrat.

To win the GOP caucus endorsement, he needs 53 votes when the group meets on Dec. 7.

Most of the 41 other House Republicans have yet to voice their support for either GOP speaker candidate. Cook has tried to win over some of those unpledged caucus members, so far to no avail.

With neither candidate touting enough votes for the caucus’ stamp of approval, the possibility of a third GOP contender has gained traction. Some lawmakers are actively calling uncommitted Republicans and those on Cook’s pledge list to see if they would entertain breaking away for a new to-be-determined candidate, according to three sources who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the race candidly. The idea, they said, is to lay the groundwork for someone who could draw support from the pro- and anti-Phelan camps if Cook and Phelan deadlock at the caucus meeting.

Miller, the Austin lobbyist, said the fluid state of the race means that, for now, many members see little upside in voicing public support for either candidate and risking political exile if they pick the losing horse.

“They want to bet right, or more importantly, they don’t want to bet wrong,” Miller said.

Phelan loyalty

The outcome will shape much of the direction of Texas politics next year, with the speaker wielding enormous control over the fate of major bills and billions in taxpayer dollars. Phelan’s reelection would likely ensure a rancorous session between the two legislative chambers, with the Senate controlled by Phelan’s political rival, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who tried to end the speaker’s political career by backing a primary challenger earlier this year. If Phelan is deposed, Patrick and the rest of the GOP’s most conservative faction could have a willing ally in driving a hardline agenda through the Legislature.

Tepper said he has decided to vote for Phelan because he views him as the stronger conservative, particularly on tax policy. He said he likes Cook personally but questioned some of his bills, including proposed changes to background checks for public sector employees. Based on his conversations with the Mansfield lawmaker, Tepper said Cook seemed “very friendly to the cities,” perhaps from his time as mayor. Tepper hopes to continue curbing the power of municipalities, a long-running priority of many Texas GOP lawmakers.

On Sunday, Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, a Phelan ally, told CBS News Texas that he is “fully supportive” of Phelan serving a third term as speaker. Others say they want to “maintain” the House’s current trajectory, as Reps. Drew Darby of San Angelo and Cole Hefner of Mount Pleasant, told The Texan. They point to conservative wins on abortion, property taxes and more under Phelan’s leadership.

Phelan has also tried to shore up support by adding firepower to his staff, hiring longtime lobbyist Mike Toomey as his chief of staff and bringing on former Gov. Rick Perry as a senior adviser. Perry told KXAN earlier this month that Phelan has “got the votes” to hold onto the gavel.

But with a majority of Republicans behind Cook, Phelan’s current path to 76 votes relies on support from the Democratic minority. And the speaker’s opponents say that the entrance of two Democrats into the speaker’s race — Ana-Maria Ramos of Richardson and John Bryant of Dallas — suggests that Phelan may not have as firm a lock on the Democratic caucus as his camp believes.

Tinderholt, meanwhile, said he believes Cook already has enough backing to reach the 60% threshold for the GOP caucus’ endorsement.

“I believe those votes are already secured,” Tinderholt said, “and the only path that Dade Phelan has to the speakership is to reject the caucus vote and rely on the Democrat caucus to support him on the floor.”

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/27/david-cook-dade-phelan-texas-house-speaker/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

WASHINGTON — After outperforming Kamala Harris in South Texas on Election Day despite being vastly outspent by Republicans, U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, has a message to his fellow Democrats in Congress. Actually, he has a few of them.

No. 1: Don’t tell him how to handle his business, he’s going to represent his district the way he knows is best. And No. 2: Clean up your own act.

In a recent interview with The Texas Tribune, the four-term Democratic congressman, with a penchant for going rogue, took a shiv to the Democratic playbook. He said the party’s fixation on abortion this cycle was “lazy” and out of touch with his majority-Catholic district. He urged the party to, in some cases, soften its defenses of transgender rights, even if that means voting against the Democratic base. He said Democrats had insufficiently attacked Republicans on economic issues. And he said the Democrats were plagued with “incompetence” in gauging the driving issues for voters in districts like his.

“Their messaging is off. I also believe their polling is off. Democratic polling has been consistently off beyond the margin of error for the last two or three cycles,” Gonzalez said in his Capitol Hill office. It’s “incompetence, at the end of the day. I think they need to get rid of people.”

Gonzalez won his competitive South Texas district — which runs from the Mexican border in Brownsville to Corpus Christi along the Gulf Coast — by less than 3 percentage points this year, fending off Republicans’ biggest offensive effort in the state. He outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to President Donald Trump in every county in his district.

Gonzalez is one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, at times voting with Republicans on issues related to energy and the border. He caused House Democratic leadership headaches as he pushed back on President Joe Biden’s climate and infrastructure agenda before eventually supporting the legislation, citing concerns it would negatively impact his district’s energy interests.

Gonzalez said his ability to see the social conservatism of his district and knowing when to break from the national party helped preserve his place in Congress.

“I told the entire caucus, don’t ever try to whip me again because I know my district better than anybody in this room,” Gonzalez said. “Having me 97% of the time is better than having my opponent 100% of the time. We need to give that leeway, especially to frontline members. Nobody knows our districts better than us.”

Republicans poured millions of dollars into supporting their candidate, former U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores, this cycle, viewing Gonzalez’s proclivity for off-color comments — including comparing Latino Trump supporters to “Jews for Hitler” in March — as a major vulnerability.

The race was among the most expensive U.S. House races in Texas this year. Flores, who previously represented the district for a few months in 2022 after winning a special election, spent over $5.7 million in the race as of mid-October.

Vicente Gonzalez's supporters watch the televised debate live between him and Republican challenger Mayra Flores in Rancho Viejo on Oct. 17, 2024. Credit: Michael Gonzalez for The Texas Tribune

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the House Majority PAC, the party’s two biggest outside spending groups for House races, spent over $1 million with ads supporting Gonzalez.

But Gonzalez has serious issue with the way both groups operated in his district. Neither group responded to requests for comment.

Gonzalez said it was an error to focus so heavily on abortion in a region that is overwhelmingly Catholic. He said the strategy showed congressional Democrats “don’t know the region and they get lazy about it,” leaning on the issue because it was salient in the 2022 midterms. Abortion was a central issue in TV ads aired in his district to help him by national Democrats, which Gonzalez said was out of touch with voters more concerned about the rising cost of living.

The ad “was hitting my opponent on abortion in an 80% Catholic community. Somebody needs to get fired for that,” Gonzalez said. “Whoever was the decision maker to do that in South Texas should be gone, because they clearly don't know the district.”

A photograph of Gonzalez, his wife Lorena Saenz, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden is displayed with other memorabilia in his office at the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. Credit: Shuran Huang for The Texas Tribune

Gonzalez saw some room for abortion to be an effective element to a winning strategy, but he said the messaging should be targeted on digital platforms to young women rather than blasted on television ads. Gonzalez still went after Flores on abortion when the two shared a debate stage in October.

Gonzalez said Democrats focused too much on TV ads generally in Texas and should have spent more time door knocking and talking to voters.

Gonzalez also lamented that Democrats don’t have a winning strategy to counter anti-trans attacks that Republicans used through the latter part of the cycle. The National Republican Congressional Committee and Sen. Ted Cruz’s reelection campaign both poured money into ads attacking Democrats as wanting to use taxpayer money to fund gender transitions for children and to allow boys to play in girls sports. Democrats and LGBTQ+ rights activists denounced the ads as spreading dangerous misinformation about trans youth.

Gonzalez was among the few Democrats to tackle the ads head on, issuing his own counter ad rebuffing the Republicans’ claims, saying he never supported tax-funded sex changes. He said more Democrats should feel comfortable following his lead, even if it leads to pushback from the progressive base.

“I think we need to protect every community in America,” Gonzalez said. “But there are issues that I don't agree with, like boys and girls bathrooms, or boys competing in girls sports, and I think we should be outspoken about it. I don't think Democrats should have to hide from a message like that.”

Gonzalez has supported pro-trans legislation in the past, voting in 2021 for the Equality Act, which would protect trans people from discrimination.

Republicans are poised to continue their attacks on transgender rights, emboldened by voter response to their ads nationwide. And Democrats are already being confronted with the issue as the first transgender member of Congress, Rep.-elect Sarah McBride of Delaware, is set to be sworn in in January. Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina introduced a bill that would ban McBride from using the women’s bathrooms or locker rooms in the Capitol complex.

When asked if he would vote for Mace’s bill, Gonzalez said: “That's a very, very tough conversation that needs to be had by Democrats. And I think at the end of the day, we got to vote our district and vote what we really believe. And I don't believe that boys should be in girls' bathrooms.” He did not specify how he would vote on the bill.

McBride has agreed not to use women’s restrooms and stressed she does not want her gender to become a distraction. All members of Congress have private bathrooms. She did not respond to a request for comment on Gonzalez’s remarks.

Gonzalez said Democrats should have invested in attack ads targeting Republican candidates who want to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Title I funding for schools in low-income communities, as Republicans have cast Democrats as supporting measures to defund the police. South Texas Republicans deny they want to cut funding for the programs.

Gonzalez also suggested he was not impressed with Democrat Michelle Vallejo, who challenged U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz in the 15th Congressional District. She lost both in 2022 and 2024, by double digits despite support from the DCCC and investment from the House Majority PAC. She ran in 2022 on a progressive platform, focusing on reproductive rights and expanding access to health care. She moderated her tune this cycle, but was unable to close or even shrink the gap.

Gonzalez said the district needs a moderate Democrat to win. “It's a tough district, especially for somebody who initially campaigned as a progressive. It's kind of hard to turn the clock back,” Gonzalez said.

Still, Vallejo made positive strides. She outperformed Harris in her district by seven percentage points. Vallejo declined to comment.

Gonzalez formerly represented the 15th Congressional District for six years before switching to the 34th district in 2022 following redistricting. Then-DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney preferred Gonzalez, a well-funded incumbent, stay in the more competitive 15th District to give Democrats a better shot at holding onto all of their South Texas seats, Gonzalez said. But Gonzalez defended the move, saying his home was drawn into the new 34th district and he had to prioritize his own race.

Gonzalez is optimistic that Democrats can continue holding on to South Texas despite the heavy investment from Republicans, saying Republicans have a “low quality of candidate,” including Flores and De La Cruz.

De La Cruz, who outperformed Trump in her district, shot back at Gonzalez’s comments in a statement. “It’s funny he’d say that, considering I chased him out of this district and he’s underperformed in the last three elections,” De La Cruz said. “He can focus on pettiness — I’ll keep picking up his slack and delivering results for South Texas.”

Gonzalez called Flores’ victory in a 2022 special election a “fluke,” saying she got elected solely because Republicans poured millions of dollars into a special election that national Democrats did not pay much attention to.

“We welcome Vicente Gonzalez’s self-delusion as the ground shifts underneath him. Donald Trump romped across South Texas, ” said Delanie Bomar, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, House Republicans’ campaign arm. “It’s only a matter of time before those same voters toss Gonzalez from office, too.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/26/texas-vicente-gonzalez-congress-democrats-abortion-transgender/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The Texas General Land Office is offering President-elect Donald Trump a 1,400-acre Starr County ranch as a site to build detention centers for his promised mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a letter the office sent him Tuesday.

Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said in the Tuesday letter that her office is “fully prepared” to enter an agreement with any federal agencies involved in deporting individuals from the country “to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.”

The state recently bought the land along the U.S.-Mexico border in the Rio Grande Valley and announced plans to build a border wall on it. The previous owner had not let the state construct a wall there and had “actively blocked law enforcement from accessing the property,” according to the letter the GLO sent Trump.

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment.

A cornerstone of Trump’s campaign was his pledge to clamp down on immigration by returning policies from his first term and deporting undocumented people en masse on a scale the country has not experienced in decades. Former aides — including some who are set to rejoin him — have described incorporating staging areas near the border to detain and deport people.

In an interview with Fox News posted Tuesday, Buckingham said she was “100% on board with the Trump administration's pledge to get these criminals out of our country.”

Buckingham had previously said she approved an easement within 24 hours of acquiring the Starr County land to let the Texas Facilities Commission, which is overseeing the state’s border wall construction, to begin building a wall. In the Fox interview, she said that move was followed by “brainstorming” with her team.

“We figured, hey, the Trump administration probably needs some deportation facilities because we've got a lot of these violent criminals that we need to round up and get the heck out of our country,” Buckingham said. She noted the land is mostly flat, “easy to build on,” accessible to international airports and near the Rio Grande.

“We're happy to make this offer and hope they take us up on it,” she added.

Trump’s vow to carry out mass deportations is certain to encounter logistical and legal challenges, like the ones that stifled promises from his first campaign once he assumed office.

However, Trump’s Cabinet picks indicate he is moving ahead in trying to carry out the deportations. He has selected Stephen Miller, an architect of the previous Trump administration’s border and immigration policy, to return as a top aide and has named Tom Homan, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to be his “border czar.”

And Texas is poised to try to help him implement the policies. After Trump left office in 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott launched an unprecedented border enforcement operation that included building a military base in Eagle Pass and the deployment of thousands of Department of Public Safety troopers and state National Guard troops to the border.

CNN reported Saturday that Texas’ “border czar” — Michael Banks, who serves as a special adviser to Abbott — has been a part of behind-the-scenes discussions with Trump’s team about immigration initiatives.

Disclosure: The Texas General Land Office has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/19/texas-border-starr-county-ranch-trump-deportation/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

A majority of the Texas State Board of Education signaled their support Tuesday for a state-authored curriculum under intense scrutiny in recent months for its heavy inclusion of biblical teachings.

Ahead of an official vote expected to happen Friday, eight of the 15 board members gave their preliminary approval to Bluebonnet Learning, the elementary school curriculum proposed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year.

The state will have until late Wednesday to submit revisions in response to concerns raised by board members and the general public before the official vote takes place Friday. Board members reserve the right to change their votes.

The curriculum was designed with a cross-disciplinary approach that uses reading and language arts lessons to advance or cement concepts in other disciplines, such as history and social studies. Critics, which included religious studies experts, argue the curriculum’s lessons allude to Christianity more than any other religion, which they say could lead to the bullying and isolation of non-Christian students, undermine church-state separation and grant the state far-reaching control over how children learn about religion. They also questioned the accuracy of some lessons.

The curriculum’s defenders say that references to Christianity will provide students with a better understanding of the country’s history.

Texas school districts have the freedom to choose their own lesson plans. If the state-authored curriculum receives approval this week, the choice to adopt the materials will remain with districts. But the state will offer an incentive of $60 per student to districts that choose to adopt the lessons, which could appeal to some as schools struggle financially after several years without a significant raise in state funding.

Three Republicans — Evelyn Brooks, Patricia Hardy and Pam Little — joined the board’s four Democrats in opposition to the materials.

Leslie Recine — a Republican whom Gov. Greg Abbott appointed to temporarily fill the State Board of Education’s District 13 seat vacated by former member Aicha Davis, a Democrat who ran successfully for a Texas House seat earlier this year — voted for the curriculum. Abbott handpicked Recine, potentially a deciding vote on the materials, to fill the seat through the end of the year days before the general election, bypassing Democrat Tiffany Clark. A majority of District 13 residents voted this election for Clark to represent them on the board next year. She ran unopposed.

Board members who signaled their support for the curriculum said they believed the materials would help students improve their reading and understanding of the world. Members also said politics in no way influenced their vote and that they supported the materials because they believed it would best serve Texas children.

“In my view, these stories are on the education side and are establishing cultural literacy,” Houston Republican Will Hickman said. “And there's religious concepts like the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule and Moses that all students should be exposed to.”

The proposed curriculum prompts teachers to relay the story of The Good Samaritan — a parable about loving everyone, including your enemies — to kindergarteners as an example of what it means to follow the Golden Rule. The story comes from the Bible, the lesson explains, and “was told by a man named Jesus” as part of his Sermon on the Mount, which included the phrase, “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.” Many other religions have their own version of the Golden Rule.

Brooks, one of the Republicans who opposed the materials Tuesday, said the Texas Education Agency is not a textbook publishing company and that treating it like such has created an uneven playing field for companies in the textbook industry. Brooks also said she has yet to see evidence showing the curriculum would improve student learning.

Hardy, a Republican who also opposed the materials, said she did so without regard for the religious references. She expressed concern about the curriculum’s age appropriateness and her belief that it does not align with state standards on reading and other subjects.

Meanwhile, some of the Democrats who voted against the curriculum said they worried the materials would inappropriately force Christianity on public schoolchildren. Others cited concerns about Texas violating the Establishment Clause, which prohibits states from endorsing a particular religion.

“If this is the standard for students in Texas, then it needs to be exactly that,” said Staci Childs, a Houston Democrat. “It needs to be high quality, and it needs to be the standard, free of any establishment clause issues, free of any lies, and it needs to be accurate.”

More than 100 Texans signed up Monday to speak for and against the state-authored curriculum.

Courtnie Bagley, education director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that helped develop the curriculum, told board members that the Texas Education Agency has made every effort to respond to concerns from the public. She said rejecting the lessons would give other materials not owned by the state an unfair advantage.

“It would create a double standard, as Bluebonnet Learning has been held to a different and more stringent review process than other materials under consideration,” Bagley said.

Opponents argued that revisions did not go far enough, and some questioned whether the state’s intentions with crafting a curriculum that leans heavily on Christianity are political.

“I am a Christian, and I do believe that religion is a part of our culture, but our nation does not have a religion. We're unique in that,” said Mary Lowe, co-founder of Families Engaged for an Effective Education. “So I do not think that our school districts should imply or try to overtly impress to young impressionable children that the state does have a state religion.”

Education officials say references to Christianity will provide students with a better understanding of the country’s history, while other supporters have stated their belief that the use of religious references does not violate the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause. Legal experts note that recent rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority have eroded decades of precedent and made it unclear what state actions constitute a violation of the establishment clause.

State leaders also say the materials cover a broad range of faiths and only make references to religion when appropriate. Education Commissioner Mike Morath has said the materials are based on extensive cognitive science research and will help improve student outcomes. Of 10 people appointed to an advisory panel by the Texas Education Agency to ensure the materials are accurate, age-appropriate and free from bias, at least half of the members have a history of faith-based advocacy.

The Texas Tribune recently reported how parents, historians and educators have criticized the ways the materials address America’s history of racism, slavery and civil rights. In public input submitted in response to the curriculum and in interviews with the Tribune, they have said the materials strip key historical figures of their complexities and flaws while omitting certain context they say would offer children a more accurate understanding of the country’s past and present. Board member Rebecca Bell-Metereau, a San Marcos Democrat, and other Texans referenced the Tribune’s reporting during public testimony on Monday.

In response to those concerns, the Texas Education Agency has said the lessons will provide students with “a strong foundation” to understand more complex concepts as they reach later grades. State officials have also said those materials are written in an age-appropriate manner.

Disclosure: Texas Public Policy Foundation has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/19/texas-sboe-bible-christianity-curriculum/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

A new Texas curriculum seeks to captivate first-grade students with a lesson on Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s historic estate long revered for its French neoclassical architecture and as a symbol of the founding father’s genius.

The lesson teaches about the Virginia property’s pulley system that opened doors, the mechanical clock that kept track of the days and the dumbwaiter that transported dinner from the kitchen to the dining room.

However, if the State Board of Education approves the curriculum when it meets this week, children could miss out on a more crucial aspect of Monticello’s history: It was built using the labor of enslaved people and occupied by hundreds of humans whom Jefferson enslaved.

Since it was proposed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year, the elementary school reading and language arts curriculum has faced strong opposition from parents, advocates and faith leaders for its heavy use of biblical teachings, which critics say could lead to the bullying and isolation of non-Christian students, undermine church-state separation and grant the state far-reaching control over how children learn about religion.

But less attention has been given to how the curriculum teaches America’s history of racism, slavery and civil rights.

Some parents, academics and concerned Texans argue that the lessons strip key historical figures of their complexities and flaws while omitting certain context they say would offer children a more accurate understanding of America’s past and present.

A Texas Tribune analysis of the public input Texans have provided to the Texas Education Agency as feedback to the curriculum and its sections on American history raises questions about why certain historical information was excluded and the impact the omissions could have on elementary school kids’ education.

“The lack of specificity is striking,” said Julia Brookins, senior program analyst of teaching and learning for the American Historical Association with whom the Tribune shared several of the curriculum’s excerpts.

A kindergarten lesson titled “Our Great Country,” for example, instructs teachers to tell students that founding fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson “realized that slavery was wrong and founded the country so that Americans could be free.” The passage omits the fact that many of them enslaved people.

A second grade lesson called “Fighting for a Cause” notes that “slavery was wrong, but it was practiced in most nations throughout history.” It does not detail the race-based nature of slavery in America that made it distinct from other parts of the world.

Another second grade lesson covering the U.S. Civil War focuses heavily on Robert E. Lee’s “excellent abilities” as general of the Confederate Army, which fought to maintain slavery, and his desire to find “a peaceful way to end the disagreement” with the North. It does not teach that Lee enslaved people or highlight his racist views that Black people were neither intelligent nor qualified to hold political power.

A lesson on Martin Luther King Jr. mostly emphasizes his nonviolent advocacy without acknowledging his swift criticism and recognition of the conditions that pushed people to violence or his belief that “large segments of white society” were more concerned about “tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity,” according to one of his speeches.

Moreover, a fifth grade lesson on World War II describes how Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg laws “were created to dehumanize and target Jewish people.” But it does not teach how those laws drew inspiration from Jim Crow and the dehumanization of Black people in America.

Texas school districts have the freedom to choose their own lesson plans. If the state-authored curriculum receives approval this week, the choice to adopt the materials will remain with districts. But the state will offer an incentive of $60 per student to districts that choose to adopt the lessons, which could appeal to some as schools struggle financially after several years without a significant raise in state funding.

The Texas Education Agency has told the Tribune that many of the curriculum’s historical references are meant to build “a strong foundation for students to understand the more complex concepts” as they get older.

The curriculum was designed with a cross-disciplinary approach that uses reading and language arts lessons to advance or cement concepts in other disciplines, such as history and social studies. While the curriculum makes it clear that the state does not intend for these materials to replace grade-level social studies instruction, it also states that certain specifics about American history are necessary “so that students can understand and retell the story of our nation’s birth.”

In response to concerns Texans shared through public input about vague and inaccurate historical references, the Texas Education Agency made minor revisions to certain texts but largely defended its choices by saying that “the content in these instructional materials is written in an age-appropriate and suitable manner.”

Several of the nearly a dozen parents, historians and educators whom the Tribune interviewed about the curriculum agree that age appropriateness is an important factor to consider when teaching history.

Teaching elementary school kids about slavery in a meaningful way “can build on children’s instincts and help students apply them to their classrooms, communities and study of the United States,” according to Learning for Justice, a community education program of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which created a guide for history teachers.

Rather than poring over the gruesome details of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, for instance, the organization recommends intentionally building instruction “that prepares students to understand the long, multidimensional history of slavery and its enduring consequences,” similar to how math instructors teach the basics of addition and subtraction long before students learn algebra.

That includes teaching that many of the founding fathers enslaved people, that enslavers often separated entire families for profit and as a form of punishment, and that the forced labor of enslaved people built many important buildings and institutions, according to Learning for Justice.

Historians interviewed by the Tribune also say that if the state is unwilling to use the materials it designed as a vehicle to provide students a more comprehensive picture of the country’s history, then education officials should reconsider its cross-disciplinary approach and whether the proposed reading and language arts curriculum is the appropriate venue for such lessons.

“I would just start, as a basic premise, that you not lie to kids,” said Michael Oberg, a history professor at the State University of New York College at Geneseo who previously taught in Texas and followed debates over the state’s social studies standards. Oberg pointed to excerpts of the state curriculum about the founding fathers’ desire for liberty and equality and Robert E. Lee’s leadership as lessons he believes leave out significant historical context.

How the curriculum covers other major historical chapters also calls into question why lessons on some events are considered age appropriate and others are not.

In stark contrast to the state curriculum’s lack of detail when covering American slavery, for example, a fifth-grade lesson on World War II is clear and precise about the horrors of the Holocaust, which it defines as “the state-sponsored and systematic persecution and murder of six million Jewish people by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.” The lesson further highlights how Jewish people “were dehumanized, imprisoned, attacked and murdered” and “stripped of their rights, dignity and lives.”

How Texas schools teach U.S. history to children has been the focus of intense political conflict in recent years. The state passed legislation in 2021 making it illegal for schools to teach slavery and racism as part of the “true founding” of the country.

The legislation came about after the summer of mass protests for racial justice in response to the murder of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. In the years that followed, Republican state lawmakers across the country pushed for legislation outlawing what Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick once described as “woke philosophies” maintaining that people, by virtue of their race or sex, are either oppressed or inherently racist. Many State Board of Education members have successfully campaigned on similar ideas in recent years.

Now, the 2021 law prompts Texas schools to teach children that slavery and racism are “deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.”

The law has sowed fear and confusion about what teachers are allowed to teach, while causing others to stray away or move quickly past certain topics like slavery and civil rights, said Jerrica Liggins, secondary education curriculum director for the Paris school district. Students are the ones who ultimately suffer, she said.

“Left out of the curriculum, I would say it would be anyone of color. But if you think about left out in the classroom, it's everyone. Because we're not giving them everything the way it happened,” Liggins said. “I'd say we were kind of sugar-coating it to make it seem to be more pleasant when it was really horrific.”

Caleb McDaniel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who teaches at Rice University, worries the state curriculum’s framing of American slavery could diminish its significance and make it difficult for students to understand. The Civil War lesson he reviewed, for instance, doesn't detail the legal mechanisms built into the Constitution that enabled slavery to expand in the decades leading up to the war. The lessons about the founding fathers, he said, also fail to provide students a full picture of who the men were.

George Washington is quoted in the curriculum, for example, as saying “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition” of slavery. But the quote is cherry-picked from a longer letter in which Washington criticizes Quaker abolitionists in Philadelphia who are working to free enslaved people, McDaniel noted.

McDaniel added that the materials he reviewed reflect how history curricula have come a long way from a time when some would question whether slavery was the cause of the Civil War. But he said their evolution has not quite “reached its ending point.”

“I think the serious study of the American past reveals a lot of inequality and a lot of failures to live up to the ideals of democracy, and racial injustice is a key example of that,” McDaniel said. “I would challenge the idea that calling attention to that and helping students understand that part of our history is ideological in some way.”

Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, was one of several people who provided public input about how the curriculum addresses slavery and religion.

Chancey said the materials’ whitewashing of the nation's founders stood out to him, as did the repeated insistence that they sought freedom for all Americans. He also pointed out that for a curriculum that its defenders claim will teach children about the role Christianity played in the nation’s founding, it fails to address the fact that many people used the religion to justify their support of slavery.

“Public schools are educating for civic purposes. We're developing our citizenry. We're preparing students to function in a pluralistic democracy and to deliberate about different ideas,” Chancey said. “Students need to have an accurate understanding of history to do that, and many of these lessons work against that goal by oversimplifying American history to the point of distortion.”

The state cannot afford to produce another generation of children who don’t have an accurate understanding of history, added Susan Nayak, a mother of an Austin school district graduate who provided public input to the Texas Education Agency on the curriculum.

“You can't just, ‘Oh, this person is just a hero, and we're just going to talk about their good parts, and that's it.’ I just don’t think that’s helpful for kids,” Nayak said. “They understand that they are not all good and all bad. And experiencing these people, historical figures, as true, complex humans, is actually helpful for them.”

Public education advocates plan to continue calling on the State Board of Education to reject the materials, said Emily Witt, senior communications and media strategist for the Texas Freedom Network, which produced a report on the curriculum and raised concerns about the religious emphasis and whitewashing of American history.

Board members have also raised concerns about the curriculum, though some of their worries are different.

Patricia Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican serving on the board, said she’s still reviewing the materials. But thus far, she doesn't think they do an adequate job of merging reading and social studies lessons. The history lessons are scattered and not in chronological order, she said, which could make it difficult for students to retain the information. Nor does she find the history lessons — like a second grader learning about the Emancipation Proclamation — age appropriate.

“It does need to be taught, but it's got to be taught at the right place,” said Hardy, a former history teacher and social studies coordinator.

Some parents told the Tribune it’s crucial that their children see themselves accurately reflected in the state’s history lessons.

Keiawnna Pitts, a Round Rock community activist and mother of four, who is Black, acknowledged that kids are impressionable but said they’re exposed early in their lives to topics like race outside of their homes and classrooms. She also said children start asking questions from a young age. Glossing over the difficult parts of history, she said, does not help them to make sense of the world around them.

“Why do we need to introduce it to our kids early? Because I need them to think critically past what is being told to them,” Pitts said. “We're gonna have to be the ones teaching our kids, because this is what we're gonna always get — what they're comfortable with.”

Disclosure: Rice University, Southern Methodist University, Southern Poverty Law Center and Texas Freedom Network have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/18/texas-curriculum-history-social-studies-slavery-racism/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.