Is Pushback At Texas Tech Too Late? And More

Stories we're following this morning at Progress Texas

This is the Progress Texas Daily Dispatch, delivered every weekday by Progress Texas Communications Director Chris Mosser. Rapid response on the breaking news stories Texas progressives need to know—all in less than 10 minutes!

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A Funeral For Freedom - Finally - At Texas Tech

Glad to be back, and thanks to Tatum Owens for enduring the red-eye mornings and long days it takes to keep this thing moving. I’ve been on a road trip to Boulder and back to celebrate my son’s graduation from CU Boulder. Congrats, big boy.

While I did my best to unplug—which, as we both know, is hard to do these days—on the way back to Austin through my hometown of Lubbock, I heard from Tatum about the recent goings-on at Texas Tech. I have been, frankly, a bit disappointed and discouraged at the lack of pushback from Tech alumni and the current student body over the way things have gone there since former State Senator Brandon Creighton took over as chancellor late last year. Chancellor Creighton has pushed hard for Tech’s academic environment to conform to the reactionary, backwater vision he himself helped craft at the Texas Legislature. This includes, but is not limited to: a systematic phasing out of programs focused on sexual orientation and gender identity and strict reviews of course material regarding race and gender. New limits placed upon Tech’s faculty mean they must now adhere to an unscientific and obsolete biological binary framework—they’re now prohibited from teaching gender as it is now commonly understood: as a fluid spectrum. This prioritizing of outdated, state-defined thinking over the tradition of academic freedom and current scientific understanding forces hundreds of course modifications to appease the partisan preferences of Texas MAGA.

Again, in my opinion, the pushback from Red Raider Nation has been lacking, at least until now. Samantha Ketterer at the Houston Chronicle says folks strolling the Tech campus on Thursday may be in for unusual sights, including a horse-drawn carriage carrying an urn and books, trailed by veiled students and faculty in a funeral procession to mourn the academic demise of Texas Tech. This has been put on by a couple of student groups, Raiders Against Censorship and Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT), and includes testimony by students before Tech’s Board of Regents. This all starts at 8 a.m. Thursday on the Tech campus in Lubbock, and more is linked in our show notes. When ideology dictates curriculum, the true casualty is the pursuit of useful and empirical knowledge.

Let me also note another observation from the old hometown as I drove over to the Tech campus on Monday night: heavy police presence. I saw multiple traffic stops over about a one-mile stretch, with both DPS and Lubbock PD being very aggressive with traffic enforcement. I grew up there, so I know that level of heat is not the norm. We’ll be watching closely to see how this demonstration is treated by local and state law enforcement.

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Cornyn vs. Paxton Polling Largely Unchanged

We are also now eleven days closer to the runoff elections in Texas on May 26. The main event is the Republican choice between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and his challenger, Attorney General Ken Paxton. Tara Suter at The Hill writes on new polling from the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston, which finds Paxton with a three-point lead over Cornyn among likely Republican runoff voters. Only about 7 percent say they’re still undecided. Notably, Democratic nominee James Talarico leads Cornyn by 3 points and Paxton by five.

Andrew Schneider at Houston Public Media quotes Mark Jones at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, who notes a lack of movement in the polling for this race since the primary: “Paxton retains an overwhelming majority of his support from March, as does Cornyn, with Wesley Hunt voters…leaning towards Paxton.” Hunt’s backers prefer Paxton by 20 points, in fact. With a 2.83 percent margin of error, this poll doesn’t say much about three-point margins, outside of Talarico’s slightly better prospects over Paxton.

And, Alejandro Serrano at the Texas Tribune notes that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick appears to be reading the tea leaves: he’s staying out of the Senate mess, but has officially backed the relatively-normal incumbent Railroad Commissioner Jim Wright over his MAGA extremist challenger, Bo French.

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Summer Camps, and The Cost of Policy Failure

One other story that has broken through my experiment with unplugging: the developments with summer camps in Texas for this first summer after the deadly flood disaster of last July 4. You’ve heard that Camp Mystic, where so many of those horribly tragic deaths occurred, will not be opening this year for the first time in a century.

I had a conversation with my freshly-graduated son last week about how quickly this story should have pivoted to politics. There’s an answer to that via another joint effort by the Texas Tribune and ProPublica reminding us that “Texas lawmakers repeatedly failed to pass flood protections. Some could have saved lives.” Politics governs policy, and last summer’s disaster was much deadlier due to decades of legislative failure—the last three decades under Republican dominance.

The facts are: most of the 137 people who died in last year’s flood were overcome in federally identified high-risk flood zones, while Texas lawmakers have rejected over 60 flood safety bills since the 1960s. Texas has more buildings in flood-prone areas than almost any other state, and we also lack any statewide mandates for building elevation or construction bans in dangerous “floodways.”

In Texas, regulation is a dirty word, and property rights almost always override safety. There’s been no shortage of scrutiny laid upon the local officials in charge that terrible night, especially in Kerr County—but the big picture shows that local governments largely lack significant authority or enforcement power when it comes to unsafe development. Even with this historic loss of life, Texas remains stubborn: following the disaster, lawmakers have only banned new youth camps from being built in these zones, while allowing thousands of residential homeowners to rebuild in the same perilous locations that were just inundated.

Further, Texas Tribune reporting by Stephen Simpson indicates that those same lawmakers are now considering backtracking on the few safety regulations they did impose on existing camps—in particular, internet connections. Republicans in the Lege did require camps to install fiber optic internet, which has apparently become too much for the owners of several camps, including Camp Champions, Camp Longhorn, and Tejas Ministries, who have sued to be allowed to open this summer without those improvements. Both Lt. Gov. Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows have said they’re in favor of dispensing with even that paltry degree of communications utility. Another hard fact: the failure of internet and cellular communications was a primary factor in the high death toll of the July 4 floods, as insufficient digital and radio infrastructure created a “dead zone” for life-saving information. That is a fact, and one that these business owners and Republican electeds appear prepared to ignore less than one year later.

Elections have consequences.

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Voting Is Cool

There are not one but TWO Texas elections on the radar right now: local, city-level elections on May 2, and the statewide primary runoffs on May 26. Early voting in those local elections is underway now. For the midterm runoffs, your registration deadline is April 27th, and early voting will begin on May 18. More on all of this at our carefully-crafted voting information website, Govotetexas.org, and there’s a nice online tool from the Texas Tribune that shows you exactly who will be on your runoff ballot based on your address and party.

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Come See Us LIVE!

We have not one but two live events on the calendar right now, in both Dallas and Houston. Houston’s first as we gather at the very cool Creekwood Grill for a live podcast taping with new Cy-Fair ISD board members to discuss their plans to reinstate textbook chapters and other learning materials undermined by their MAGA predecessors. We want you there but seating is limited and an RSVP is required to attend. This happens on the evening of Wednesday May 20, see the show notes for a link to get registered.

We’re also getting ready for our 16th anniversary celebration in Dallas with drinks, light bites, and a fun review of the highlights of our successes over the last few years! Save the date which is Tuesday June 16 and see the link in the show notes to reserve your spot.

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We’re On The Radio In Houston!

Progress Texas is very proud to join the lineup of the legendary KPFT Radio in Houston, which allows us to now reach a great many new listeners in Texas’ largest and most diverse city! Our In Progress roundtable show can be heard every Thursday evening at 6:30 on KPFT 90.1 FM, and a second time each Sunday morning at 11 on KPFT’s HD-2 channel. With your support, we hope to further expand our radio footprint to the top five Texas media markets in 2026. Make a donation to help us continue our radio efforts at https://act.progresstexas.org/a/radio-donate.

We’re also working hard to expand our podcast network to include Spanish-speaking media, to increase the reach of our daily progressive messages across the all-important and diverse Hispanic communities of Texas! Make your donation toward Spanish Media today at https://act.progresstexas.org/a/espanol.

I’m Chris Mosser, thanks for reading, and we’ll see you later.