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      Republican Voters May Decide Mayor’s Race in Democratic Houston

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      The nonpartisan race to lead the nation’s fourth-largest city ends Saturday in a runoff between two longtime Democrats who have sparred over public safety.Leonard Wickers, a 73-year-old carpenter, took a break from building a new house in South Houston to cast a ballot during early voting this week for the city’s mayoral runoff election.Like most at the polling site in a largely Black neighborhood, Mr. Wickers, who is Black, said he backed Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, a fixture of Democratic politics and the Black community in Houston who has the support of the outgoing mayor, Sylvester Turner, as well as party luminaries like Bill and Hillary Clinton.But Mr. Wickers had little enthusiasm for his vote. And, if he was being honest, he would not mind if her opponent, John Whitmire, a white politician and another longtime Democrat, prevailed. “That’s all for show,” Mr. Wickers said of the race. “Nothing’s getting done. The streets are still raggedy.”His sentiments appear to be broadly shared. Houstonians may have many complaints about their city — crime and traffic, housing costs and garbage collection and the difficulty of getting a permit to do anything — but in contrast to the roiling divides and bitter clashes that characterized recent municipal elections in Los Angeles and Chicago, the race to lead the nation’s fourth-largest city has produced scant fireworks or fanfare.“What if we held a mayor election and nobody came?” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. “That’s effectively where we are.”The mayoral candidate John Whitmire, 74, has been in the State Senate since 1983. Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressIn part that is because, for the first time in years, a nonpartisan mayoral race in Houston will end in a runoff, on Saturday, featuring two prominent politicians who are both Democrats: Ms. Jackson Lee, 73, in Congress since 1995, and Mr. Whitmire, 74, who has been in the State Senate since 1983.It may also be because no single issue has galvanized the electorate or motivated turnout. Even crime, which voters cite as a top concern, is on the decline, according to police statistics.“The economy is good in Houston, housing prices could be a little bit more affordable, but in a general sense, things are going well,” said Gene Wu, a state representative who endorsed Mr. Whitmire. “There are always potholes. But you know what, even the pothole situation has gotten better.”Ms. Jackson Lee came with some baggage: decades of partisan fights, including over the Iraq War and gay rights, a reputation for being tough on staff and frequent grabs at the television spotlight. Large numbers of Houston voters already knew her, and many did not like her. In a University of Houston poll this fall, 43 percent of respondents said they would “never” vote for her, compared with just 15 percent refusing to vote for Mr. Whitmire.In a city whose diversity is a point of civic pride, it is Mr. Whitmire who has been leading in polls. If elected, he would be the first white male mayor to lead Houston since Bill White, more than a decade ago.“Was he the perfect candidate? No,” Michelle Naff, 56, who lives in Ms. Jackson Lee’s district, said after casting a ballot for Mr. Whitmire during the first round of voting in November. “But I do not like her as my congresswoman.”The two Democrats have struggled to draw bright lines between each other on issues. In separate interviews with The New York Times, both stressed the need for effective management in City Hall, a desire to attract new businesses to Houston and a focus on public safety.“If the perception is you are unsafe, that matters,” Mr. Whitmire said, adding that he no longer goes out to shop in stores at night. “It affects our economy.” Mr. Whitmire has promised to work with Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration to bring in state troopers to help patrol, even as a similar approach in Austin, a progressive university town, resulted in pushback over racial profiling concerns.“Houston is not Austin,” he said.Ms. Jackson Lee also stressed the need to provide public safety, but said she would do so using local officers, and in a way that addressed injustices. “I want to make sure that social justice is alongside of a wonderful, strong group of law enforcement and fire fighters,” she said.More than Mr. Whitmire, she talked about affordable housing — a relatively new issue for Houston, a sprawling city long known for its low housing prices — and about improving the city’s image nationally.“I think we have to give Houston a new brand,” she said. “My theme is, let’s make Houston pop.”When Ms. Jackson Lee jumped into the race in March, she appeared to present a stark contrast to, and potentially stiff competition for, Mr. Whitmire, the presumptive front-runner, who was seen by many Democrats as too moderate and too aligned with Republicans.Two young Black Democratic candidates dropped out of the race, leaving Ms. Jackson with a clear shot to challenge Mr. Whitmire.“I think we have to give Houston a new brand,” Representative Sheila Jackson Lee said. “My theme is, let’s make Houston pop.”Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle, via Associated PressBut her campaign started late and has had stumbles. A recent television ad featured the wrong date for the election. She faced renewed questions about her treatment of staff members after a recording became public of a woman, said to be Ms. Jackson Lee, berating her staff. “I know that I am not perfect,” she said in a statement in response.Mr. Whitmire has had a significant fund-raising advantage, spending millions on television advertisements and mailers. Outside groups, including one run by retired police officers, have also flooded mailboxes attacking Ms. Jackson Lee.Mr. Whitmire has faced scrutiny over past conflicts of interest because of his role as a state legislator and his work as a lawyer for a firm whose clients had interests before the state. And he faced attacks from Mayor Turner, who cannot run again because of term limits, after Mr. Whitmire said during a debate that there was a lack of Asian and Hispanic diversity among municipal leaders, many of whom, like Mr. Turner, are Black.“That’s a dog whistle,” Mr. Turner said at a City Council meeting.The contest has underscored the complicated way race and ethnicity plays into a nonpartisan election in a city where no single group of voters is dominant.While roughly 45 percent of the population is Hispanic, according to census data, the figure overestimates the community’s voting power, said Hector de León, a former local elections official. The average age of voters in a municipal election is around 60, said Mr. de León, who publishes a website analyzing election data. “The overwhelming majority of Hispanic registered voters are way below that age, and it is a challenge to get young people to vote regardless of their race or ethnicity,” he said.The nonpartisan nature of the race also means that, even though Houston generally votes for Democrats in national and statewide races, Republican voters hold immense sway.“To win a nonpartisan race, you have to have some bipartisan appeal,” said Odus Evbagharu, a consultant and the former head of the Democratic Party in Harris County, which includes Houston.From the start, Mr. Whitmire has actively courted Republican support, launching his run with an event last year attended by prominent local Republican donors. He has played up his bipartisan experience while also stressing his identity as a Democrat and his endorsements from groups traditionally aligned with Democrats, like the AFL-CIO.In his interview with The Times, Mr. Whitmire said that he opposed the Republican positions on women’s health care and on border security. At the same time, he presented himself as a moderate on municipal issues. He talked about his experience being held at gunpoint with his wife and young daughter during a robbery in the driveway of their Houston home in the 1990s, stressed his ability to work with Republicans in the State Capitol and voiced his opposition to some of Houston’s new bike lanes, which he said created traffic backups.Ms. Jackson Lee, for her part, said she too could work with Republicans, citing her work with Senator John Cornyn of Texas creating the Juneteenth national holiday. More

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      Members of Texas Republican party free to associate with Nazi sympathizers

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      Members of Texas’s Republican party are free to associate with Nazi sympathizers without worries of violating internal policy after they held a vote on Saturday.In a 32-29 vote, the party’s executive committee decided against excluding from their organization those “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial”. A proposal to ban such individuals was included in a resolution supporting Israel as it wars with Hamas in Gaza.Although the resolution passed, the clause banning members from associating with Nazi sympathizers did not make it in.Some members of the executive committee argued that the clause was too vague.One was committee member Dan Tully, who maintained that the clause “could put you on a slippery slope”.Committee members in favor of the clause expressed their disappointment of the vote to the Texas Tribune.Rolando Garcia, a committee member who drafted the language of the clause banning ties to Nazi sympathizers, said its removal from the approved resolution “sends a disturbing message”.“We’re not specifying any individual or association,” Garcia said. “This is simply a statement of principle.”Morgan Cisneros Graham, another committee member in favor of the clause, said she did not understand how some of her colleagues “don’t have the discernment to define what a Nazi is”.Some members of the board also tried to prevent evidence of the vote, the Texas Tribune reported.The vote was held shortly after the Texas Tribune photographed the Republican state representative Jonathan Stickland meeting with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.Fuentes is an avowed admirer of Hitler, whose regime murdered 6 million Jews during the Holocaust around the time of the second world war. He has also previously called for a “holy war” against Jews.After news of the meeting, the committee debated dissociating with Stickland’s political action committee Defend Texas Liberty. Instead, the clause aiming to ban antisemitism was added into the resolution.The vote in Texas came after Israel launched war in the Palestinian city of Gaza after Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel killed at least 1,200 people. The number of Palestinian people killed by Israeli strikes and bombardments that followed has surpassed 15,200, according to the Gaza health ministry.Israel – one of the US’s closest allies – has long been supported by the American Republican party.Nikki Haley and Chris Christie are among the 2024 Republican presidential election hopefuls who have voiced support for more US military aid to Israel in its war with Hamas.The Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has been less clear about his approach to Middle East foreign policy, but the former president has said in the past that there had been “no better friend or ally of Israel” than his White House.Florida governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said he would “stand with Israel and treat terrorists like the scum they are” if he was elected to the Oval Office.The Texas state Republican party did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      The women who made painful choices challenge Texas’s severe abortion ban

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      After Danielle Mathisen and her husband realized they would be having a baby girl, they started calling her “Mini”. “We figured she would be a mini-me,” Mathisen said.For months, Mathisen’s pregnancy appeared normal. Genetic testing went well. Her parents were thrilled – this would be the first grandchild in the family.But in September 2021, two weeks after Texas banned abortion past six weeks of pregnancy, Mathisen went in for her 18-week anatomy scan. And Mathisen, then a 25-year-old fourth-year medical student, quickly realized that something was terribly wrong.Doctors soon confirmed Mathisen’s fears: the fetus had only one kidney, severe scoliosis, a partially formed umbilical cord and improperly positioned hands and feet. The fetus also had an underdeveloped brain.Mathisen’s pregnancy was at risk of ending before she ever gave birth. If Mathisen did give birth, her baby would probably die from respiratory failure shortly afterward. “She doesn’t have enough brain to tell her lungs how to breathe,” Mathisen said.If she continued the pregnancy, Mathisen’s health could be at risk, too.Soon after her diagnosis, Mathisen started calling abortion clinics in Colorado. They were booked solid. Her mother ultimately found her an appointment at a clinic in New Mexico, which Mathisen said was holding appointments open for Texas women. The appointment was for the very next day.Afterward, when she returned to Texas, Mathisen and her husband told everybody that she had had a miscarriage. “Continuing a pregnancy that was not going to end up with a baby in the crib, but a baby in the casket – it did not make sense for me, personally,” she said.Now, though, Mathisen has gone public with her story. She is one of 20 Texas women who have sued their home state, arguing that they were denied medically necessary abortions. While Texas bans almost all abortions, the procedure, according to state law, should be allowed in medical emergencies. But abortion rights advocates and doctors in the state say that the exceptions in the law are so vague that doctors can’t decipher them. Instead, they are forced to watch until patients get sick enough to intervene.The Texas supreme court will hear arguments in the case on Tuesday. Rather than demolishing Texas’s abortion ban outright, the women – as well as two doctors who have also joined the case – are hoping that the court will agree to clarify the state’s abortion exceptions.A judge in Austin, Texas, heard arguments in the case in July, in a hearing believed to mark the first time that women testified in court about their experiences with abortion since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year.Amanda Zurawski, the lead plaintiff in the case, talked about learning that her cervix had dilated too early in her pregnancy. She had no chance of giving birth to a healthy baby – but she was also unable to get an abortion in Texas because doctors could still detect a fetal heartbeat, she said. Zurawski ultimately developed sepsis and spent three days in the ICU.Samantha Casiano testified about discovering that her fetus had been diagnosed with anencephaly, a condition where parts of a fetus’s skull and brain do not develop properly. But she did not have the money to travel out of state for an abortion, so she gave birth to a baby daughter who struggled for air and died just four hours after birth. Casiano was so overcome on the stand that, in the middle of testifying, she threw up.A few weeks after the women’s testimony, in August, the judge issued a preliminary injunction, ordering that doctors be allowed to perform abortions in cases where patients have an “emergent medical condition” that threatens their life or health.But Texas immediately appealed that ruling, which froze the preliminary injunction. In court filings, attorneys for Texas argued that doctors, not the state, are responsible for what happened to the women in the lawsuit.“These independent decisions by third-party medical providers, right or wrong, break any purported chain of causation” between the abortion ban and any medical emergency, they alleged.In any case, the attorneys argued, these women don’t have the legal right to sue, because the pregnancies at issue in the lawsuit are in the past and they are no longer at risk of imminent damage from Texas’s abortion laws. Multiple women involved in the lawsuit, including Mathisen, became pregnant again.Nick Kabat, a staff attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is representing the women in the Texas case, said that the Texas state supreme court –made up exclusively of Republicans – could buy that argument. Kabat is preparing for the possibility that the justices rule that, in order to sue, advocates need a plaintiff who is actively in the midst of a medical emergency.“They could say that what you need is a woman who is in an emergency in desperate need of an abortion,” Kabat said. “So basically, someone who has amniotic fluid dripping down their leg or they’re actively bleeding, where they have an IV connected to them that’s really keeping them alive. And you know what, if they say that, then we’ll find that patient, because the patient exists in Texas, unfortunately.”At the end of August, the Texas government enacted new legislation to, in theory, allow doctors to perform abortions in cases of ectopic pregnancies – a life-threatening condition – or when a pregnant person’s water breaks too early for the pregnancy to be viable.But critics say that those exceptions don’t cover the vast array of nuanced issues that can arise in pregnancy. In addition, rather than completely shielding a doctor from prosecution, the new exceptions offer doctors a defense in court only after they have been charged – a legal mechanism known as an “affirmative defense”.“Whatever fix the Texas government thinks it has adopted, it hasn’t solved this issue,” Kabat said. “That law has not changed the way doctors are practicing.”Mathisen ended up moving to Hawaii for her OB-GYN residency, rather than remain in Texas, where she had once hoped to work.“I’m currently pregnant with another baby girl, and I would love for her to live across the street from her grandma,” Mathisen said. “Right now, I can’t do that, because I don’t think I could go back to Texas and practice medicine if I cannot do abortions.”Since the Texas lawsuit was first filed in March, the Center for Reproductive Rights has filed similar lawsuits in Idaho and Tennessee. The Center is also representing a woman who has filed a federal complaint against a hospital in Oklahoma that, she says, refused to give her an abortion for a dangerous and nonviable pregnancy. Instead, staffers at the hospital allegedly told the woman to wait in the hospital parking lot until she was “crashing”.If the Texas state supreme court rules in favor of women like Mathisen, it will not set a legal precedent for the lawsuits in other states. But Kabat believes it would help.“These abortion medical exemptions are worded in very similar ways,” Kabat said. “A ruling in Texas in our favor would be powerfully persuasive to justices deciding similar cases in other states.”Throughout her ordeal, Mathisen clung to one small source of comfort: in the ultrasound, Mathisen could see that Mini’s hands were curved into the shape of a heart.“Like the heart that Taylor Swift makes,” Mathisen said. “The heart that she made with her hands, through all of my tears and sobbing – I was like, ‘She’s OK.’ It was just a sign that everything was going to be OK, even if we ended the pregnancy.” More

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      in US Politics

      Dallas lives with JFK legacy – but hate that spawned assassination simmers

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      The brick walls are painted white. Dozens of cardboard boxes marked “Books” are stacked like a barricade on grimy floorboards. At the south-east corner window, the boxes appear to form a sniper’s perch. It was here 60 years ago on Wednesday that, by official accounts, Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots heard around the world.The assassination of John F Kennedy, the 35th US president, shone an unforgiving light on Dallas, Texas, which came to be known as the “city of hate”. Six decades later, the city has grown beyond recognition and come a long way in grappling with that legacy. But the forces that turned Dealey Plaza into a white hot crucible are arguably more prevalent than ever.A 24-hour news cycle; gun violence; casual accusations of treason; rightwing extremism and Confederate flags; conspiracy theories and distrust of authority – all are part of the story of the Kennedy assassination and, perhaps more than when the 40th or 50th anniversaries were commemorated, all are newly resonant today.“The political climate now is like the closed-minded climate that was in Dallas at the time of the assassination where people believe what they believe,” said Carolyn Barta, 84, a veteran journalist born and raised in Dallas. “‘If you didn’t believe that, you were wrong and I’m not considering your opinion or how you see things.’ It’s the same sort of condition that is now prevalent in the country and it’s frightening.”In the 1960 presidential election, Dallas had voted for the Republican Richard Nixon over Democrat Kennedy by the biggest margin of any major city. Kennedy’s civil rights bill, introduced in 1963, was unpopular in the south. In the nine months before his Texas swing, he received more than 400 death threats nationwide.In Dallas, the buckle on the Bible belt, the hostility was a toxic mix of racism, anti-communism and religious bigotry aimed at America’s first Catholic president – some feared that Kennedy was being controlled by the pope. Extremist groups such as the John Birch Society and the Minutemen were small but vociferous.Mike Rawlings, a Democrat who was mayor of Dallas from 2011 to 2019, said: “There was definitely a very conservative bent. The John Birchers were the worst of it but still there was a lot of folks that were that way. It was the Tea Party and Maga [Make America great again] before the Tea Party and Maga.”The rightwing firebrand Edwin Walker, a former army general who in 1962 was charged (but not convicted) with “insurrection and seditious conspiracy”, moved his base of operations to the city. A protest flyer circulating Dallas in 1963 had photos of Kennedy with the headline: “Wanted for treason.”Bill Minutaglio, a journalist and co-author of Dallas 1963, which examines the extremist elements of the time, also sees modern parallels. “People say you could change the title of that book to ‘United States 2023’ because of a lot of the polarisation and anger and vituperative nature of the political discourse. The social commentary that seemed to be redolent and pervasive back then sure seems to be in existence today.“There was an extreme amount of anger and hate in the city of Dallas in 1963 but it was marshalled by a small minority of people. They just happened to be people that held what I call the public microphone. They had access to the airwaves, church pulpits, newspapers, political forums and they were angry and they were hateful – there’s just no other word for it. They seemed to have cornered the market in terms of the social climate.”There had been hints of danger in Dallas. Four days before the 1960 election, Kennedy’s running mate, Lyndon Johnson, was heckled by protesters who spat in the direction of his wife, Lady Bird, and grabbed her gloves and threw them in a gutter. A month before Kennedy’s visit in 1963, the UN ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, was spat on and hit on the head with a placard, prompting some advisers to warn Kennedy to stay away.And on the day of the president’s arrival, the Dallas Morning News newspaper contained a full-page, black-bordered advertisement that included 12 rhetorical questions that accused Kennedy of being soft on communism and betraying US allies. Kennedy reportedly read the ad and remarked to his wife Jacqueline, “we’re headed into nut country”.But oligarchs in Dallas, aware of the dangers, had called for a dignified reception for Kennedy and tried to tighten security. About 200,000 people came out to watch the motorcade and give the first couple an effusive welcome, waving signs and flags including the Confederate flag. As they neared Dealey Plaza, Governor John Connally’s wife, Nellie, told Kennedy: “Mr President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”The presidential limousine turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza at around 12.30pm. As it passed below the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire suddenly erupted from a window on the sixth floor, sending onlookers diving and running. Bullets struck the president’s neck and head and he slumped over toward Jacqueline. Governor Connally was shot in the back but survived.The car sped off to Parkland Memorial hospital a few minutes away. A Catholic priest was summoned to administer the last rites and, and at 1pm, the 46-year-old Kennedy was pronounced dead, sending shockwaves around the world. In Britain, Big Ben tolled every minute for an hour and lights dimmed in Piccadilly Circus; in Germany, 60,000 West Berliners held an impromptu torchlight parade.The death of a president gave birth to the 24-hour news cycle as, for the first time, major TV and radio networks cancelled regular programming to provide wall-to-wall coverage of preparations for Kennedy’s funeral and the criminal investigation in Dallas. Hundreds of reporters crammed into the police headquarters, where Oswald held a bizarre press conference and was subsequently shot dead on live television by a nightclub owner, Jack Ruby.That incident sealed Dallas’s fate. The New York Times newspaper described it as “not too many decades removed from the vigilante tradition of the old frontier” (even today, around the corner from Dealey Plaza, Wild Bill’s Western Store sells parody pistols and bullets with the slogan: “We don’t call 911.”)Patricia Puckett-Hall, 71, who remembers Oswald helping her with homework when he rented a room from his grandmother, and who now runs the Oswald Rooming House Museum, said: “The country renamed Dallas the ‘city of hate’ and for about 20 years we could not get tourists to come to Dallas. We couldn’t get conventioneers, we couldn’t get new industry to come to the Dallas area.“We were truly taboo economically and there were thousands of stories where family or businessmen would go north-east and the cab driver, being friendly, would say where you from? If they made the mistake of saying Dallas, the driver would pull over, throw their things on the sidewalk and leave them wherever they were. The word got passed through the grapevine: do not tell them you’re from Dallas.”Within the city, there were attempts to bury the stigma. Some wanted to demolish the book depository. Mary Kay Ash, a cosmetics entrepreneur, told CBS in 1984: “I think what we should have done is tear that building down, not put up that plaza, not do anything to commemorate it and make a parking lot of out of that thing and not have it there for people to remember.”But the book depository was saved and, after much soul searching, the Sixth Floor Museum opened there in 1989. The sniper’s perch at the corner window is recreated based on crime scene photos and encased in glass. Other exhibits include an Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano rifle identical to the one found by investigators, Oswald’s wedding ring, Ruby’s grey fedora hat and a scale model of Dealey Plaza built by the FBI, complete with strings tracing the paths of the bullets.Neither the Warren Commission nor a congressional select committee found any evidence of a plot from extremist rightwing groups or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). But the assassination has spawned a thousand conspiracy theories that Oswald did not act alone, boosted by Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK and QAnon.Nicola Longford, the British-born chief executive of the Sixth Floor Museum, said: “We do stay neutral. We don’t tell you what to believe. We present the facts and some people might want to dispute those facts. We always hope that there will be new information that will come forward but so far all the conspiracy theories, and the popular ones, can easily be debunked.”The museum has collected almost 2,500 oral histories and is still collecting them from eyewitnesses, some of whom have stayed silent for decades. Before the coronavirus pandemic, it had more than 400,000 visitors a year; in the last fiscal year, when it opened five days a week, it had 265,000. There is also a daily flow of tourists through Dealey Plaza, with some posing for photos on the infamous “grassy knoll”.Meanwhile, two factors were important in rebuilding Dallas’s reputation. The Dallas Cowboys American football team enjoyed success and were dubbed “America’s team”. The TV soap Dallas ran from 1978 to 1991, starring Larry Hagman and Patrick Duffy, enjoying worldwide success and turning outsiders’ first question from “Who shot JFK?” to “Who shot JR?”When Dallas, and the world, marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination in 2013, many found it a cathartic experience. For Rawlings, 69, the former mayor, who delivered a speech during a solemn ceremony at Dealey Plaza, it was an opportunity to research and reflect on the city’s trajectory.He said: “There was a psychosis that the city went through, there’s no question and a real questioning of where you’re from,” he said. “Look, we’re all from someplace it stays with us. Proust said the past is never in the past; it’s with us all the time and it definitely was through the 60s and 70s and as we grew.“But what I understood much better is how Dallas got on with it much quicker than I would have ever thought. It was like: it happened, we had to deal with it. There were some issues but we’ve got to take the future in our hands and do something with it as opposed to kind of stewing in our own pity and guilt.”A decade later, the city is looking forward rather than back. Dallas-Fort Worth is one of the America’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas, drawing business looking to expand or relocate, and has the world’s second busiest airport. Increasingly young and cosmopolitan, it is on course to overtake the Chicago area to become the third most-populous metro within the decade.Only a fraction of residents can remember the Kennedy assassination now and there is no official commemoration planned for Wednesday. The former police headquarters, now a law school, recently opened an exhibition that shows Oswald’s jail cell, interrogation room and final steps, but it is by invitation only and not open to the public.But as Dallas finally moves on from 22 November 1963, America is sliding back into distrust, polarisation and violence. A mob driven to a frenzy by President Donald Trump’s election lies stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021; a man last year broke into the home of the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacked her husband with a hammer.Minutaglio, author of a new book, A Single Star and Bloody Knuckles: A History of Politics and Race in Texas, said: “I’ve met some people of Dallas who truly are not surprised by the political environment today because they saw it back then.“They saw the consequence of how people can spread conspiracy theories and supercharge things and just turn the temperature up so high that it becomes an explosive and cancerous and frightening environment. Sadly, I don’t know that we learned a lot of the lessons from back then so we keep repeating the same mistakes of letting extremism fester and then multiply.”Rawlings, who now works in private equity, added: “To me the most fascinating part of the relevancy today – because I don’t believe in a conspiracy theory – is that this sort of vitriol can turn into mental illness so quickly. Someone in Maine can kill people in a bowling alley or people feel alienated and they go into a church private school in Nashville and shoot people.“Everything we do can create this and it did back then and Lee Harvey Oswald pops up. I don’t think there was a big belief that we need to kill Kennedy but there was just that river of hate that’s in us all and, sometimes, people pop up and do bad things.” More

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      Texas: Republican-controlled school board votes against climate textbooks

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      Texas’s Republican-controlled education board voted Friday not to include several climate textbooks in the state science curriculum.The 15-member board rejected seven out of 12 for eighth-graders. The approved textbooks are published by Savvas Learning Company, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Accelerate Learning and Summit K-12.The rejected textbooks included climate-crisis policy solutions, and conservative board members criticized them for being too negative about fossil fuels – a major industry in the state. Texas leads the nation in the production of crude oil and natural gas.Although Texas adopted standards in 2021 that requires eighth-graders be taught the basics about climate change, some argue that measure does not go far enough.Aaron Kinsey, a Republican board member and executive of an oilfield services company in west Texas, criticized photos in some textbooks as unduly besmirching the oil and gas industry during a discussion of the materials this week.“The selection of certain images can make things appear worse than they are, and I believe there was bias,” Kinsey said, according to Hearst Newspapers.“You want to see children smiling in oilfields?” said Democratic board member Aicha Davis. “I don’t know what you want.”Texas’s 1,000-plus school districts are not required to use board-approved textbooks. But the board’s decision wields influence.Some in powerful positions have tried to sway the board to reject the textbooks. On 1 November, Texas railroad commissioner Wayne Christian – who oversees the state’s oil and gas industry – sent a letter to the education board’s chairman Kevin Ellis, relaying “concerns for potential textbooks that could promote a radical environmentalist agenda”.Also contested was the inclusion of lessons on evolution – the theory addressing the origins of human existence which the scientific community supports and religious groups reject.The decision comes despite pleas from the National Science Teaching Association to not “allow misguided objections to evolution and climate change” to affect the adoption of new textbooks.The deputy director of the National Center on Science Education, Glenn Branch, said: “Members of the board are clearly motivated to take some of these textbooks off of the approved list because of their personal and ideological beliefs regarding evolution and climate change.”Texas is one of six states that has not adopted the Next Generation Science Standards in its K-12 science curriculum. The standards underscore that climate change is a real threat caused by humans and can be mitigated by a reduction in greenhouse gases.Texas has seen some of the most extreme effects of the worsening climate crisis in recent years. According to the Texas state climatologist, John Nielsen-Gammon, the summer of 2023 was the second hottest on record, after 2011.In 2021, Texas experienced an unprecedented winter storm that blanketed much of the state in snow, left millions without power after the electrical grid failed, and resulted in deaths. Houston also bore the wrath of 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, a devastating category 4 hurricane that destroyed homes and buildings while leading to the deaths of more than 100 people in Texas.The states ranks 41st out of 50 in the US.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Texas legislators pass hardline immigration bill denounced as racist

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      The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, is expected to sign a bill that would make crossing into the state without documentation a crime, one of the harshest immigration policies in the US to date.The bill, SB 4, was passed by the Texas house and is awaiting final approval from Abbott.On Wednesday, Abbott said that he looked forward to signing the bill, in a post to X, formally known as Twitter.“I look forward to signing Senate Bill 4, which creates penalties for illegal entry into Texas & authorizes the removal of illegal immigrants apprehended at the border,” Abbott said.In recent months, Abbott, a Republican, has launched a series of controversial programs targeting migrants, including bussing migrants to Democratic-led cities without proper coordination and Operation Lone Star, a multimillion-dollar initiative that has placed razor wire and thousands of troops at the Texas-Mexico border.SB 4 makes it unlawful for anyone to cross into Texas from another country without papers a state misdemeanor that is punishable by up to two years in prison.The law also requires a state judge to order a person to return to the country they crossed from in lieu of prosecution.If a person refuses to return, they could face a felony charge and up to 20 years in prison.The bill also gives Texas officers the ability to arrest anyone who they believe has crossed into the state illegally, a fact that advocates and Democrats have decried as racist.Legal advocates have questioned the bill’s legality, as removing noncitizens from the US falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Experts have also warned that the new bill could cause a dispute with Mexico, as the country and others could choose not to cooperate with state officials.Democratic Texas representatives and advocates soundly denounced the bill as problematic and a waste of state funds.The Texas representative Jolanda Jones called SB 4 and its supporters “racist”.“It’s not all right to be racist. I will stop pulling the race card when you stop being racist,” she said.The Texas representative Ramón Romero Jr posted a video on social media denouncing the passing of SB 4 and emphasizing the importance of winning elections.“We fought really hard but sadly on issues like this, their ears are closed on the other side,” Romero said in a video posted to X, referring to Republicans. “We can say anything and they’re just not listening.”In a statement to X, the Texas Civil Rights Project, a social justice non-profit, said the bill was “creating an entirely new, separate, unequal immigration system in the US” and allowing police to “be both judge and jury to determine a person’s right to stay in the US”.Immigrant rights organizations also rallied outside of the Texas House on Tuesday to protest the vote on SB 4.SB 4 was considered as apart of a separate legislative session requested by Abbott for several anti-immigration bills. More

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      Cody Smith Wins Uvalde Mayor Race

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      Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter was killed last year in a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, lost a special election to become mayor of a city that has struggled with divisions in the aftermath of the tragedy, The Associated Press reported.Cody Smith, a former mayor of Uvalde, will return to the office after running a campaign that called for honoring the lives of the 19 students and two teachers who died in the massacre, while focusing on moving the city forward.Mr. Smith, a senior vice president at First State Bank of Uvalde, was first elected to the City Council in 1994, and then as mayor in 2008 and in 2010. In his campaign, he also called for better communications among police agencies and mobilizing volunteers from the community to help those in need.During her campaign, many voters responded to Ms. Mata-Rubio’s many tributes to the daughter she lost, Lexi Rubio, whose image and favorite color were enshrined on some of her mother’s campaign materials. Ms. Mata-Rubio demanded more accountability for the slow police response to the shooting and advocated stronger gun laws, in addition to calling for more attention to fixing roads and adding stop signs.In third place was an art teacher, Veronica Martinez, who did little campaigning.Ms. Mata-Rubio and Ms. Martinez had been vying to become the first woman and the third Latino to lead the city of 15,000, where Hispanic residents are a majority.The special election was called after the current mayor, Don McLaughlin, announced that he was leaving City Hall to run for a Texas House seat. Mr. Smith’s term will last one year; another election for a full four-year term will happen next year.During the midterm elections, voters in Uvalde County, which also includes six small towns, similarly chose not to support politicians who called for police accountability and more restrictions on guns, delivering a political blow to the victims’ families who had campaigned on their behalf.Mr. Smith will take office on Nov. 14. More

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      ‘We Still Don’t Have Answers’: A Uvalde Mother Is Running for Mayor

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      After her daughter was killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Kimberly Mata-Rubio figured it was time to get answers and help her city heal.On a recent Saturday morning, a day after what would have been Lexi Rubio’s 12th birthday, dozens gathered in the Texas city of Uvalde for a run in her honor. Blasting Lexi’s playlist, Kimberly Mata-Rubio, her mother, took off from under a towering mural of Lexi, one of 19 children and two teachers killed in a shooting at her school last year.This was more than a fund-raising run for charity — it was also a campaign event of sorts, as Ms. Mata-Rubio and the other competitors made their way past a series of signs in yellow (Lexi’s favorite color) announcing her candidacy for mayor.Ms. Mata-Rubio, a former news reporter, would be the first woman and only the third Latino to lead the Hispanic majority city, one that has been bitterly divided in the aftermath of one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.Her campaign, in which she is vying with a veteran local politician and an elementary school art teacher, often prominently features her daughter’s favorite color and reminders of a tragedy that many would prefer to leave in the past.Ms. Mata-Rubio said she understood immediately that everybody in the small town of 15,000 people had lost something, if not a loved one, then certainly a sense of security. Like other parents, she complained that the authorities had released confusing and often conflicting information that made it hard to understand why they took more than an hour to confront and kill the gunman.Ms. Mata-Rubio, second from right, said she understood immediately that everybody in the small town of 15,000 people had lost something, if not a loved one, then a sense of security.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesUvalde has been bitterly divided in the aftermath of one of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesThe Uvalde parents also pushed for a ban on assault weapons like the one used in the attack on Robb Elementary School. The issue prompted deep divisions in a rural town renowned for white-tailed deer hunting, where many households have guns and rifles are a regular prize at school raffles.But as president of Lives Robbed, an organization made up of mothers and grandmothers of the Uvalde victims, Ms. Mata-Rubio has organized rallies, flown to Washington and sat through legislative hearings in Austin. And it did not feel like she was doing enough.When she saw an opening to run for mayor, she texted her husband, Felix, asking for advice.“You’re Lexi’s mom,” he replied. “You can do it.”For her, the mission is clear.“We still don’t have answers. We still don’t know what role everyone played then and what role everyone is playing now,” she said of the many ongoing investigations into the delayed police response by the local district attorney and others.She said she also wants to bring the town together over the still-contentious issues of assault weapons, and whether police officers who failed to confront the Uvalde gunman should be fired or face criminal charges.“I want to have the difficult conversations so that everybody feels heard,” Ms. Mata-Rubio said. “I’m going to be raising my children in this community. I want to bring the community back together again.”Felix Rubio, Ms. Rubio’s husband, and their daughter, Jahleela.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesIf Ms. Mata-Rubio were to win, she would become the first woman to lead the city.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesShe is running against a veteran local politician who hopes to return to office, Cody Smith, and an elementary school art teacher, Veronica Martinez, who have said during their campaigns that they not only want to bring Uvalde back from the nightmare of the shooting, but also to focus on other issues.In the most recent election in Uvalde County, which includes the county seat and six other small towns, voters largely failed to support politicians who backed more control on guns, delivering a political blow to the families of the victims who campaigned on their behalf. But a much narrower pool of voters will decide the mayor’s race, those who live within in Uvalde itself.Ms. Mata-Rubio’s campaign raised the most money in the 30-day period that ended in September, $80,000 to Mr. Smith’s $50,000, according to the most recent campaign finance report filings, with many of her donations coming from out of town. Ms. Martinez has not sought contributions.The Nov. 7 election, with early voting this week, was called after the current mayor, Don McLaughlin, announced he was leaving City Hall to run for a Texas House seat. The winner will need to run for a full four-year term in 2024.Veronica Martinez, an art teacher at Dalton Elementary School, said she hopes to create an open-door culture in a City Hall that often does not feel inviting to residents.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesCody Smith, a former mayor and a senior vice president at First State Bank of Uvalde, was first elected to the City Council in 1994 and also served as mayor in 2008 and 2010.Sergio Flores for The New York TimesIf Ms. Mata-Rubio or Ms. Martinez were to win, they would become the third mayor of Hispanic ancestry and the first woman to lead the city.George Garza, 85, who in the 1990s became the second Hispanic mayor, said the city’s Hispanic majority has often gone unrecognized in city politics. “Representation is important,” he said.Mr. Smith, a former mayor and a senior vice president at First State Bank of Uvalde, was first elected to the City Council in 1994 and also served as mayor in 2008 and 2010. He declined to be interviewed, but has called for supporting better communication between law enforcement agencies.Ms. Martinez, said she supports in principle some form of an assault rifle ban, but said the city must also focus on local issues that affect everyone, like lowering what people pay in property taxes on their homes.She said she hopes to change the culture in a City Hall that often does not feel inviting to residents.“Maybe I can effect some change, and do some good by having an open-door policy,” she said.Some voters like Amanda Juarez, 42, a teacher’s assistant, want to see a fresh face in city government, but she said that she worries that Ms. Mata-Rubio may focus too much on the tragedy and gun control issues. She said she appreciates Ms. Martinez’s calls for lowering taxes on property like her mobile home, whose assessed value recently went up by several thousand dollars for no apparent reason. “We need people who are going to solve our issues at the local level,” she said.Ms. Mata-Rubio, right, and her campaign manager, Laura Barberena, preparing for the Labor Day weekend parade in Uvalde in September.Tamir Kalifa for The New York TimesSome voters want to see a fresh face in city government. “We need people who are going to solve our issues at the local level,” said voter, Amanda Juarez.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesTo help win over voters interested in such grass-roots issues, Ms. Mata-Rubio has been knocking on doors and handing over yellow campaign signs and cards with her key campaign issues: Bring People Together, Protect Our History and Boost Our Economy.Moments after taking part in Lexi’s Legacy Run, as it was called, Ms. Mata-Rubio canvassed the streets and she ran into Antonia Rios, 80, a potential voter who was excited to see her. “No te conocía. I didn’t know you. You are very young,” Ms. Rios said, combining English and Spanish as many do in this town 60 miles east of the border with Mexico. “Yo voto por ti. I’ll vote for you.”Kirsten Noyes More