www.thecentersquare.com – By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-25 13:43:00
The Houston Independent School District (HISD) faces multiple investigations for allegedly using taxpayer money to promote a \$4.4 billion bond last November, violating Texas electioneering laws. The bond, rejected by voters, would have added to the district’s existing \$2.5 billion debt and represented the largest property tax increase in state history. HISD allocated \$2 million in its 2024-2025 budget for bond promotion, including \$1.5 million in consulting fees and social media ads urging voter support. Over 50 criminal complaints were filed by parents, prompting probes by the Texas Attorney General, Texas Education Agency, and Harris County DA. HISD has not commented.
(The Center Square) – Multiple investigations have been launched against the state’s largest school district over allegations of electioneering after it already faced criminal fraud charges and federal, state and county investigations over the years.
The latest allegation against Houston Independent School District is that board members again violated state law by using taxpayer money to urge voters to support a $4.4 billion bond last November.
The proposal totaled $11 billion in debt, including the interest on the principal, The Center Square reported. That’s on top of the district already owing $2.5 billion.
The bond proposal would have been the largest debt and property tax increase in state history. Voters rejected it after county officials jacked up property taxes last year by nearly 10% using a loophole in state law.
At issue is a HISD 2024-2025 budget line item “Key Action 2,” which allocated $2 million to promote the bond vote, including through hiring a consulting firm and paying for social media ads.
Last fall, several HISD parents filed criminal complaints with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. That total has since grown to more than 50. As part of documents received through a public information request, parents learned that the Office of Attorney General opened an investigation last October, NBC affiliate KPRC 2 News Houston reported.
“Based on our preliminary investigation, the OAG has reason to believe the HISD Board of Trustees may be engaging in electioneering in favor of the proposed bond in violation of … the Texas education code,” the OAG wrote in a letter to the board. State law prohibits state or local funds or other resources of a school district from being used to “electioneer for or against any candidate, measure, our political party.”
The investigation found that the district made Facebook posts encouraging voters to support the bond and circulated the posts through sponsored ads.
Overall, $1.5 million was paid in consulting fees for the failed HISD bond proposal, according to payment records obtained by KRPC.
The Texas Education Agency and Harris County District Attorney’s Office have also launched investigations into HISD. The district has yet to issue a public comment or respond to requests for comment about funding the bond effort or the investigation.
Last year, the OAG sued several school districts for alleged electioneering against school choice candidates during the Republican primary election, The Center Square reported. The majority of school choice Republican candidates won their races and were elected in November. After being sworn into office this year, they voted for the first school choice program in state history, which Gov. Greg Abbott already signed into law.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Right
This article primarily reports on investigations into alleged electioneering violations by the Houston Independent School District, focusing on misuse of taxpayer funds to support a bond proposal. The tone is factual but highlights legal and financial controversies linked to a public school district, emphasizing taxpayer burden and state legal actions. The mention of school choice Republican candidates’ victories and Governor Greg Abbott’s signed law frames the narrative within a pro-school choice, conservative context. While largely reporting facts, the framing and selective inclusion of details about Republican candidates and school choice policies suggest a slight Center-Right bias.
www.kxan.com – Eric Henrikson – 2025-07-18 13:28:00
SUMMARY: Austin plans to release 350 sterile grass carp into Lake Austin to control hydrilla, an invasive plant that disrupts recreation and navigation. While grass carp eat hydrilla, local fishermen oppose the move, fearing harm to the lake’s bass fishery by removing vital underwater vegetation. A prior effort from 2011–2013 released 32,000 carp, which devastated native plants. Officials stress the new, smaller-scale approach focuses only on the lake’s eastern section. Critics like fishing guide Carson Conklin argue alternative methods, such as aquatic mowing, are better solutions. Authorities hope to avoid past mistakes while managing hydrilla’s spread responsibly.
Up to 1.7 million Texans may lose health insurance due to changes in the Affordable Care Act marketplace from a new Republican tax and spending bill, worsening Texas’ already highest uninsured rate. Nearly 4 million Texans enrolled in ACA plans this year, boosted by enhanced premium tax credits that lower costs. These credits, set to expire at the end of 2025, have been vital in Texas, a non-Medicaid expansion state, for low-income adults ineligible for Medicaid. The GOP bill also adds enrollment barriers, shortens open enrollment, and excludes some immigrants. Experts warn this will raise premiums, strain hospitals, and destabilize coverage.
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WASHINGTON — Up to 1.7 million Texans are expected to lose their health insurance through coming changes to the Affordable Care Act marketplace under Republicans’ tax and spending megabill, according to an analysis by health policy experts — a serious blow to a state health care system already strained by the highest uninsured rate in the nation.
Nearly 4 million Texans signed up for ACA health plans this year, a high-water mark in the marketplace’s 12-year history. But between the looming expiration of Biden-era enhanced premium tax credits — which lower out-of-pocket costs for people with marketplace coverage — and changes in the recently passed GOP megabill, the state’s uninsured population is expected to spike.
The effects could reverberate across the health care landscape, with higher premiums, more financial strain on hospitals and destabilized insurance marketplaces, experts said.
Because Texas never expanded Medicaid to people earning above the federal poverty level — as 40 other states have done — the ACA marketplace has been an enormous driver of coverage, particularly among lower-income people. Texas’ uninsured rate fell from 23.7 percent in 2010 to 17.4 percent by 2023, with ACA enrollment contributing significantly.
Of the state’s nearly 4 million enrollees this year, close to 2.5 million earn between 100 and 150% of the federal poverty level, or $32,150 to $48,225 for a family of four. That means the ACA has helped fill the gap for people who would be eligible for Medicaid in expansion states, where adults who earn up to 138% of the federal poverty level are eligible.
The vast majority of Medicaid recipients in Texas are children. Low-income adults can only qualify if they or their child have a documented disability, are pregnant or over 65, or are a parent with a monthly income of less than $300 for a family of four.
The impending changes could represent the biggest source of coverage loss since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, said Cynthia Cox, director of the Program on the ACA at KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization that has projected the state-by-state effect of Trump’s megabill.
“I think back to the Great Recession, when a lot of people lost their jobs and thus lost their job-based health insurance coverage,” Cox said. “This is going to be more than that.”
Making it harder to enroll
Much of the attention around the Republican tax and spending bill has focused on cuts to Medicaid, especially the imposition of work requirements. But Texas is insulated from those changes owing to its status as a non-expansion state, and Medicaid coverage loss — while projected by KFF to be about 200,000 — is muted compared to other states.
The ACA is another story.
For one, the bill adds new layers of bureaucracy that make it harder to enroll in coverage through the marketplace, with an end to automatic renewal and more income documentation requirements. It also shortens the open enrollment period to just one month and ends year-round enrollment for people earning under 150 percent of the federal poverty level in 2026. And it prevents certain lawfully present immigrants — including DACA recipients, asylees, people with Temporary Protected Status and refugees — from acquiring insurance through the ACA marketplace.
The changes will affect most Texans who receive marketplace coverage, 95% of whom claimed a sliding-scale premium subsidy — a monthly tax credit designed to make premiums more affordable based on income — in 2025. Over 1.4 million enrollees — or 36 percent — automatically renewed their plans, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
Republicans say the changes will eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in the ACA marketplace and help reduce untenable federal spending levels. More frequent documentation and verification processes, they contend, will ensure that taxpayers are only funding health care costs for those who are truly eligible.
“Under the Trump Administration, we will no longer tolerate waste, fraud, and abuse at the expense of our most vulnerable citizens,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement about ending duplicative enrollment in multiple federal health insurance programs. “With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, we now have the tools to strengthen these vital programs for generations to come.”
But health care researchers argue the cumulative effect will worsen health outcomes.
“The whole bill is just designed to dismantle these health programs by getting people to disenroll in them, which then makes the entire system less functional,” said Lynn Cowles, the health and food justice director at Every Texan, a left-leaning think tank. “Because the risk level in each enrollment group is higher.”
KFF projects that ACA changes in the bill will lead to 560,000 Texans losing coverage.
End of enhanced premium tax credits
Most of the expected coverage loss will come not from a provision in the bill, but rather what was left out.
ACA enrollment in Texas has skyrocketed since 2021 because of a federal expansion of premium tax credits, a monthly subsidy to insurers that lowers the cost of premiums based on expected income. That year, Congress extended eligibility for tax credits to some middle-income people earning just over 400% of the federal poverty level — the standard cutoff to qualify for the subsidies — in a bid to eliminate the so-called subsidy cliff for those barely above the cutoff. Lawmakers also capped premiums based on income, driving down monthly costs for the lowest-income people who claim the tax credits. ACA enrollees earning less than 150% of the poverty threshold — between $15,650 and $23,475 for individuals in Texas — pay little to no monthly premium.
The policy was created by the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 and renewed in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Both bills passed with only Democratic votes.
For states like Texas that never expanded Medicaid, the enhanced premium tax credits have been a lifeline for lower-income people who do not qualify for Medicaid. Fifty-eight percent of Texas enrollees have a monthly cost of under $10.
“Since these enhanced premium tax credits have become available, the number of people nationally getting ACA marketplace coverage has more than doubled,” Cox said. “But a lot of that growth is concentrated in Texas and a handful of other states, and it’s really these low-income people that are driving that growth.”
But the enhanced premium tax credits are set to expire at the end of the 2025 — and premiums could skyrocket. This is especially true for lower-income enrollees. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank, projects that someone earning $22,000 a year would see their monthly premium rise from $0 to $63 per month, for example.
KFF projects more than 1.1 million Texans could lose coverage if the tax credits expire. Congress could still strike a deal to extend them — which some GOP senators have expressed openness to — but doing so is unlikely in Republican-controlled Washington.
For those earning over 400% of the poverty level who have claimed tax credits for the past four years — many of them small-business owners, rural Texans or people approaching retirement age — premiums will increase by threefold in some cases, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Using 2024 data, KFF projected that the average premium in Texas will rise by 115%, or $456 per year, for people who use tax credits to get insurance through the ACA.
“There’s some people — in particular, those who make more than four times the poverty level — who are going to be hit by a double whammy where they’re not only losing their financial assistance, they’re also going to have to pay this potentially double-digit premium increase,” Cox said. “For those folks, we’re probably expecting a lot of them to be priced out.”
When premiums become prohibitively expensive, people — especially those who are healthy — tend to drop their coverage, heightening risk for insurance companies and further driving up premiums for enrollees who do not receive coverage through the ACA marketplace. And when the marketplace as a whole contracts, insurers face further cost pressure, which they pass on to enrollees.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, the state’s largest insurer, has requested a rate increase of 21% next year for ACA-compliant individual plans, according to a copy of their rate filing shared with The Texas Tribune. A spokesperson for the company said it was a preliminary rate hike but confirmed rate increases are being driven by federal changes to the ACA market and tax credit expiration.
Disclosure: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas and Every Texan 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.
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Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
The article presents a detailed analysis of the projected impacts of a Republican-led tax and spending bill on health insurance coverage in Texas, with a strong focus on potential negative consequences. While the piece includes quotes from Republican officials and outlines their stated goals of reducing fraud and federal spending, the overall framing and emphasis lean toward criticism of the bill’s effects on low-income populations, health equity, and insurance affordability. Sources cited include left-leaning think tanks and health policy advocates. The coverage is rooted in factual reporting but reflects a perspective more sympathetic to Democratic health care policies.
www.youtube.com – FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth – 2025-07-17 21:27:56
SUMMARY: The Trump administration struck a deal allowing ICE access to Medicaid data to identify undocumented immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security says this aims to prevent unauthorized individuals from receiving Medicaid benefits. Critics, including Lynn Cowles of the Texas-based group Every Texan, argue it violates privacy and will deter immigrants from seeking medical care. The policy affects nearly 79 million enrollees and could have a chilling effect on public health. Governor Abbott’s prior order gathered similar data in Texas. California’s attorney general has filed a legal injunction, calling the federal move reckless and a misuse of private medical information.
The Trump administration has struck a deal to give immigration officials access to Medicaid enrollees’ personal data. It’s expected …
