🟪 Austin ISD postpones districtwide boundary changes, says more school closures are possible (KUT)

🟪 Paxton says Austin’s ‘electric-ready’ building code violates Texas law (Austin Current)

🟪 Texas State Board of Education votes to add Christian texts to list of required reading materials (Houston Public Media)

🟪 Unease about Talarico’s Black support on display at Texas Democratic Convention (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Texas cities forced to remove rainbow crosswalks are installing colorful alternatives (Texas Tribune)

🟪 Nursing homes, factory owners and immigrants brace for fallout from Supreme Court ruling (Washington Post)

🟪 Trump taps former Oklahoma trooper as new ICE director (New York Times)

READ ON!

✅ Austin ISD postpones districtwide boundary changes, says more school closures are possible (KUT)

The Austin Independent School District is postponing most of its districtwide school boundary realignment changes until the 2028-29 school year. The new plan could include closing more schools in the next couple of years, though which ones is unclear.

The district first mentioned a plan to realign attendance zones in 2025, but it was postponed after community pushback. This May, district officials began working on a boundary realignment plan that would modify enrollment areas for elementary, middle and high school students. Those changes were set to take effect in the 2027-28 school year to help balance enrollment across the district.

AISD officials also have been holding meetings to hear feedback from the members of the public, some of whom have raised concerns about how these changes will affect their families and about what they consider an already unstable district.

In an email sent to families Friday, AISD Superintendent Matias Segura said moving the timeline will allow the district to make better and more sustainable long-term decisions. The plan is now divided in two phases… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Paxton says Austin’s ‘electric-ready’ building code violates Texas law (Austin Current)

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion Friday saying part of an Austin Energy code that went into effect last year conflicts with Texas law and is unenforceable, opening a new legal challenge for Austin’s push to make new buildings easier to electrify.

In April 2025, the Austin City Council adopted the 2024 International Energy Conservation Code, which, among other things, created new “electric-ready” requirements for residential and commercial buildings that could make it easier for future owners to transition away from natural gas.

Weeks later, Texas Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, asked Paxton whether those provisions conflicted with a 2021 state law prohibiting local governments from discriminating against utility services based on the type of energy used. In his opinion, Paxton concluded that they do.

Paxton wrote that Austin’s new electric-ready requirements have the “purpose, intent or effect” of discriminating against gas utilities, which conflicts with state law, a finding that could intensify the broader political fight over local control, consumer choice and the role of natural gas in Texas.

“We therefore conclude that the Utility Code’s broad prohibition renders (the provision) of the City’s ordinance unenforceable,” Paxton wrote.

Austin Energy did not respond to a request for comment late Friday afternoon… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas State Board of Education votes to add Christian texts to list of required reading materials (Houston Public Media)

The State Board of Education voted Friday to approve controversial changes for Texas public schools, incorporating Christian stories from the Bible into classrooms and reframing history lessons in elementary and middle schools.

The state board voted to rewrite the social studies curriculum for kindergarten through eighth grade. The changes deemphasize world history and refocus lessons on Texas and U.S. history, along with minimizing lessons about cultural and racial diversity.

Friday's votes also mean at least one Christian text will be added to required reading materials in several grade levels. The Christian stories to be added include "Parable of the Prodigal Son" and "The Eight Beatitudes" from the Bible as well as many others.

The move could be unique to Texas. Antero Garcia, president of the National Council of Teachers of English and a Stanford University professor, told the Associated Press he doesn't know of any other state with a mandatory reading list that includes religious texts.

The changes will impact more than 5 million students across Texas and are scheduled to begin for the 2030-31 school year… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Texas cities forced to remove rainbow crosswalks are installing colorful alternatives (Texas Tribune)

Forced to remove rainbow crosswalks under a state edict to erase “political” messages from their streets, some Texas cities are finding new and colorful ways to celebrate Pride and their LGBTQ+ communities.

In El Paso, street lamps have been wrapped in Pride flags. Dallas recently unveiled public library steps adorned in multicolor fashion. In Austin, residents last week painted hearts of all shades onto a downtown mural. All of the permanent displays channeled support for LGBTQ+ residents in the same spaces the crosswalks once memorialized.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said the mural is meant to help Austin residents show solidarity with their LGBTQ+ neighbors while pushing back against the crosswalk removal… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Unease about Talarico’s Black support on display at Texas Democratic Convention (Texas Tribune)

Black Democrats caucusing at the Texas Democratic Party convention Friday cheered when state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee, said November would bring an end to three decades of one-party statewide rule. But some of the most emphatic applause he received during his remarks came when he acknowledged the Democratic Party’s “troubling history of taking Black voters for granted.” “Let’s just be very honest,” Talarico said Friday to a room in Corpus Christi packed full of Black Democrats from around the state.

“I am committing to you to not make those mistakes. I am committed to working with the members of this caucus to show up for, invest in and fight for the votes of every Black Texan.” Nearly four months after defeating U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas — one of the state’s most prominent Black politicians — for the U.S. Senate nomination, Talarico’s quest to coalesce Black Democrats behind his candidacy was still ongoing among the party’s rank-and-file activists at a convention where Texas Democrats were looking to present a forceful show of unity.

The unease about Talarico’s standing with Black Texans stems from a primary in which polls consistently showed the Austin Democrat with meager support — sometimes under 10% — from Black voters. The rest went to Crockett, forming the basis of her 46% vote share in the March primary. She endorsed Talarico the day after her loss and urged Democrats to “rally around” their nominees.

More recently, however, Crockett has cast doubt on whether Black voters have unified behind Talarico and the broader statewide ticket. Ahead of this week’s convention, which she skipped, Crockett also declined to commit to campaigning for Talarico, telling the Dallas Morning News she was “more focused on down-ballot races.” Energizing the Black voters core to the Democratic base will be critical for Talarico’s chances in November, when he’ll need a surge in turnout among left-leaning voters, even as he also works to appeal to independents and moderate Republicans — namely those repelled by the legal and ethical scandals and hard-right politics of Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton, the attorney general. “I don’t have to tell this caucus, though, that there is no way to win this race without Black Texans — no way at all,” Talarico said.

“This is not going to be easy. This is a big state, and we don’t have a lot of time. But I am looking forward to being your partner in this fight, because we have to win.” Talarico — who also stopped by several other caucuses Friday, including the Latino, labor and Stonewall Democrats’ meetings — was well received at the Black caucus, with a notable portion of the room jumping to their feet when he appeared… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Nursing homes, factory owners and immigrants brace for fallout from Supreme Court ruling (Washington Post)

Immigrants began making plans to sell or rent their homes, secure bank accounts and figure out thorny issues like child custody arrangements. Business owners started calculating how many days they can continue to employ workers whose legal status is set to expire. And nursing home leaders warned they would have fewer beds to offer if health aides are forced to leave the country. Panic rippled through communities from Florida to Ohio and beyond in the hours after the Supreme Court cleared the Trump administration Thursday to strip humanitarian protections from Haitians and Syrians — and potentially all 1.3 million immigrants from over a dozen countries who had been previously shielded from deportation.

“The residents will be losing caregivers that they really have become attached to,” said Colin O’Leary, executive director at Laurel Ridge Rehabilitation & Skilled Care Center in Boston. Managers at the facility were racing to figure out how much longer staff members from Haiti with temporary protected status could continue taking care of patients. “That’s a lot for our residents to handle.”

Attorneys said Haitians and Syrians could lose work permits in little more than a month, but the deadline remained unclear because lower court judges must issue orders to implement the decision. Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, told reporters Thursday that Haitians and others with temporary protected status should be detained and deported once they lose the benefit. “If you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported,” Miller said. Some of those immigrants have lived in the United States for decades and said they feared being sent back to conflict-ridden homelands that they barely know and whose languages some do not speak.

Temporary protected status, a program created in 1990, grants work permits and deportation reprieves to immigrants for up to 18 months if their nations are engulfed in war, natural disasters or other emergencies. Applicants cannot have serious criminal records and the government can, and has, renewed the protections multiple times. President Donald Trump and his allies have alleged that the temporary protections have lasted long after the emergencies have passed and have allowed undocumented immigrants and visa overstayers to live and work in the United States. But the program also has become a political wedge. When he was a senator representing Florida, home to thousands of Haitians, Venezuelans and others with the protections, Secretary of State Marco Rubio favored the protections… 🟪 (READ MORE)

✅ Trump taps former Oklahoma trooper as new ICE director (New York Times)

President Trump said on Saturday he was nominating Lance Schroyer, a former Oklahoma state trooper, to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump told the Senate to move quickly to confirm Mr. Schroyer, who would be the first Senate-confirmed leader of the high-profile agency since 2017.

“Lance has firsthand experience getting Illegal Aliens OFF our streets and, just like ME and our Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, he LOVES the men and women of ICE,” Mr. Trump wrote. ICE has been at the center of the Trump administration’s push to ramp up deportations across the country. Those efforts have brought heavy scrutiny to the agency, particularly after immigration agents killed two Americans in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Mr. Schroyer appears to have limited experience managing national policies, and had never worked at ICE before Mr. Mullin took over as homeland security secretary in March. He is currently a senior adviser to Mr. Mullin, and previously was a major at the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety. He served as a U.S. Marine. Mr. Schroyer was part of a security detail for Mr. Mullin when Mr. Mullin served in the Senate. He was assigned by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, a Department of Homeland Security official said.

In May, Mr. Trump tapped David Venturella, a former career Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, to lead the agency in an acting capacity. Mr. Venturella will stay on as acting director until Mr. Schroyer is confirmed, the official said. The agency has been without a Senate-confirmed director since an Obama administration official retired in January 2017. In his first term, Mr. Trump tried to install Tom Homan, who now serves as the White House border czar, as the permanent director of ICE.

His nomination stalled in the Senate. Mr. Schroyer hails from the same state as Mr. Mullin, the new homeland security chief, who praised the pick in a post on social media. “With over 29 years of law enforcement experience, Lance will play a vital role in helping deliver on the President’s mandate from the American people to target, arrest, and deport illegal aliens,” Mr. Mullin wrote… 🟪 (READ MORE)