Palo Pinto Mountains State Park will be the first to open in North Texas in about 25 years.

Texas will get the biggest portion of the first rollout of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program, which was created in tandem with legislation slashing Medicaid funding.

LUBBOCK, Texas — The meeting of the local NAACP chapter began with a prayer — and then the litany of injustices came pouring out. 

A Black high school football player was called a “b—h-ass” n-word during a game by white players in September with no consequence, his mom said. A Black 12-year-old boy, falsely accused last December of touching a white girl’s breast, was threatened and interrogated by a police officer at school without his parents and sentenced to a disciplinary alternative school for a month, his grandfather recounted. A Black honors student was wrongly accused by a white teacher of having a vape (it was a pencil sharpener) and sentenced to the alternative school for a month this fall, her mom said.  

“They’re breaking people,” said Phyllis Gant, a longtime leader of the NAACP chapter in this northwest Texas city, referring to local schools’ treatment of Black children. “It’s just open season on our students.”

Just last year, there was hope that the racial climate at Lubbock-area schools might improve. The federal government had launched civil rights investigations after several alleged incidents of racial bullying shocked the community and made national headlines. In fall 2024, a resolution seemed to be in sight: An investigator from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights was planning to visit the area, community members said, for what they hoped would be a final round of interviews before the agency put in place a set of protections negotiated with the Lubbock-Cooper school district. 

Then the 2024 presidential election happened — and the visit didn’t. In March, the Trump administration closed seven of the Education Department’s 12 regional civil rights enforcement offices, including the one in Dallas, which had been investigating complaints about Lubbock. Emails from the lawyer representing the families to the federal investigator bounced back — like hundreds of other OCR employees, she had been terminated.

Since then, race relations in school districts in and around Lubbock have taken a turn for the worse, many parents and educators say. Black residents — who make up about 8 percent of Lubbock County — didn’t expect the federal government to bring a halt to racist incidents, but the possibility of an agreement between the government and school districts provided a sense of accountability. Now, parents and students say racial epithets are more common in public, and Black teachers fear drawing attention to themselves. Gant says the NAACP chapter fields frequent calls from parents seeking help in addressing racial incidents they no longer bother to report to the Education Department. 

Since President Donald Trump took office, the agency has not publicly announced a single investigation into racial discrimination against Black students, instead prioritizing investigations into alleged anti-white discrimination, antisemitism complaints and policies regarding  transgender students. 

All told this year, the Education Department under Trump has dismissed thousands of civil rights investigations. During the first six months of this year, OCR required schools to make changes and agree to federal monitoring in just 59 cases, compared with 336 during the same period last year, a Washington Post analysis found.

“In many of our communities where people feel isolated and like they didn’t have anyone to turn to, OCR mattered and gave people a sense of hope,” said Paige Duggins-Clay, a lawyer at the Intercultural Development Research Association, an education policy and legal advocacy group that helped file some of the OCR complaints against Lubbock schools. “And it matters that they’ve essentially destroyed it.”

In an email, Julie Hartman, press secretary for legal affairs for the Department of Education, wrote, “These complaints of racial bullying were filed in 2022 and 2023, meaning that the Biden Administration had more time to investigate this than the Trump Administration has even been in office. The Trump Administration’s OCR will continue vigorously enforcing the law to uphold all Americans’ civil rights.” She did not respond to a question about whether the agency had opened any investigations into discrimination against Black students. 

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

Some white residents have noticed the change too. Lubbock County, located at the bottom of the Panhandle, is home to more than a quarter million people. It is the urban seat for a sprawling county that encompasses several suburban and rural school districts and hosts Texas Tech University at its center.

Tracey Benefield — who has two children in Hutchinson Middle School in the Lubbock Independent School District, which borders the Lubbock-Cooper district — is from a family that has lived in the area for generations. She says her son has witnessed multiple incidents of racial bullying over the past year.

“My son was walking down the hall with his friend who’s Black, and some kid shoulder-checked him and called him the n-word. That’s been one of many,” she said. “Things have absolutely gotten worse. The attitudes have always been there, but people acting on their attitudes is completely different.” Lubbock district officials did not directly respond to questions about Benefield’s assertions.

She thinks OCR’s retreat, among other changes within the federal government, has had an impact. “People are more emboldened,” she said. “People have always had racist ideas, but now there’s no consequences for being racist.” 

Prior to Trump’s election, the concerns of parents and civil rights groups were quite different: Many were frustrated that Office for Civil Rights cases could linger for years as overworked investigators tracked down details and testimonies. Some were starting to advocate for more OCR staff and speedier resolutions. The outcry from residents, along with the media attention, prompted the Lubbock-Cooper and nearby Slaton school districts — where Black students make up about 3 percent and 5 percent of the student bodies, respectively — to adopt policies of mandatory in-school suspension for students caught making racial slurs and spurred training for staff. 

But for many, the changes weren’t coming quickly enough.

Related: Under Trump, protecting students’ civil rights looks very different

In 2022, Tracy Kemp’s eldest son, Brady, then an eighth grader, was one of nine Black students whose pictures were put on an Instagram page called “LBMS Monkeys,” which stood for “Laura Bush Middle School Monkeys.” (Brady is being referred to by his nickname and his last name is being withheld to protect his privacy.) Kemp was part of a group of parents in the Lubbock-Cooper school district who filed OCR complaints that August over what they said was a toxic racial atmosphere that subjected their children to repeated racial bullying. White students would sometimes play whipping noises on their phones when Black students walked through the halls, according to the complaints. Despite a school district investigation that included reaching out to the FBI, those responsible were never caught. 

Lubbock-Cooper officials said via email that they “responded swiftly and appropriately” to the 2022 incident at Laura Bush Middle School. “Efforts of the district to ensure all students feel valued, supported, and a sense of belonging have contributed to the positive, nurturing environment our campuses strive to maintain,” wrote Sadie Alderson, the district’s executive director of public information.

Kemp stayed in the Lubbock-Cooper district for another year, but even though the page was taken down, the taunting and bullying didn’t let up, she says. Her middle son was in sixth grade at LBMS that year and was called racial epithets on the school bus and in the hallways. (His name is being withheld to protect his privacy.) When Brady, who had graduated from the middle school and started at Lubbock-Cooper High School, tried to start a Black Student Union there, she says, a white student ripped the page with signatures from his notebook. Kemp says the principal told her there was nothing he could do. The final straw came one day when the ninth grader didn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. The teacher told him he was a criminal who was breaking the law, Kemp says, and the harassment started up again, this time on Snapchat, with the same language as the “monkeys” Instagram page. 

In July 2023, Kemp moved with her family to New Mexico and commuted 75 miles each way until she found a job closer to her new home. Leaving Lubbock-Cooper, she said, was life-changing for her kids’ mental health.

“In eighth grade, you’re going through puberty, you’re learning about yourself, you’re growing and you have all these different feelings. And now you add into the mix, ‘These people don’t like me because of my color’ — that’s a whole different type of aspect to have to deal with,” said Kemp. “And on the flip side of that, I also have to encourage my child that not every white person feels this way, because I don’t want to teach my child hate either.”

Brady, now a 12th grader, also says he’s happy the family moved. “Honestly, it’s a lot easier,” he said. “There’s no arguments, there’s nothing to worry about, really. I just focus on school more than anything.”

Related: What’s happened since Texas killed in-state tuition for undocumented students

Others who have stayed say they’ve paid a price. Last December, Ja’Maury, a then-12-year-old whose last name is being withheld to protect his privacy, learned of rumors that he’d touched a white girl’s breast during school. He went straight to administrators at the school, Commander William C. McCool Academy, to tell them the truth. But the assistant principal believed the girl’s story and radioed a police officer, who interrogated him and threatened him with jail unless he confessed, according to Ja’Maury and his grandfather, Mike Anzley. Alone in a room of adults, Ja’Maury broke down and admitted to something he says never happened. 

“He was yelling and threatening to send me to juvie if I didn’t say I did it. I was scared,” Ja’Maury recalled in an interview. “It was a white person’s word against a Black person’s word.”

Ja’Maury was assigned 30 days at Priority Intervention Academy, Lubbock Independent School District’s detention school, where children are sent for offenses determined to be too severe for in-school suspension. Constantly anxious, he reverted to sleeping in his grandfather’s bed like he did as a toddler. At the detention school, he said, he was so afraid of defying adults that he twice wet his pants rather than challenge a teacher who said he couldn’t leave class to use the bathroom.  

“He had never been in trouble before,” said Anzley. He’d always taught Ja’Maury to trust adults, and said he was devastated by the adults at McCool betraying that trust. “I had to make him distinguish right from wrong in a whole new way.” 

Anzley filed a formal grievance with the district and, according to a copy of the findings shared with The Hechinger Report, administrators agreed to wipe the incident from his discipline file, issue a formal apology and provide training in discipline and due process to both McCool administrators and the officer who interrogated him. 

McCool administrators did not respond to requests for comment. Amanda Castro-Crist, executive director of communications and community relations for Lubbock ISD, wrote in an email that the district could not discuss individual students because of federal laws protecting student privacy, but that it “is proud to serve a diverse student body.”

Related: More first-generation students in Texas are applying to college 

Gant, the 62-year-old NAACP leader, says that growing up in Lubbock she never experienced the kind of racism she sees now. An accountant who runs her own business, she got involved in community activism about 20 years ago after enduring identity theft and a costly, time-consuming effort to clear her name. “I’m a strong, faith-based woman,” said Gant. “Who else will someone call? Who will go to their meetings for free, come with the facts and the research and not make them feel like they owe anything?” 

Gant noted changes the districts have made in the wake of the OCR investigation and parent activism, including the new suspension policies. Administrators in Lubbock-Cooper sometimes even proactively contact her about a parent concern, she said. In Lubbock ISD, Gant credits the director of student and parent resolution, Brian Ellyson, with listening to parents and helping them resolve conflicts in a principled manner. 

Ellyson was one of two Lubbock school officials at the September NAACP meeting, held in an independent living center on the south side of town equidistant between Laura Bush Middle School and McCool Academy. Parent after parent described their children’s mistreatment. 

Leshai Whitfield said her son was sent to a detention school after a teacher complained that he’d pushed her; she said her son was only trying to leave the classroom because of a fight between two other students. Naquelia Edwards said her son has been repeatedly called the n-word and disciplined for fights while white students went unpunished. Jessika Ogden, mother of the 11th grade honors student who was wrongly accused of having a vape, said she believes her daughter was racially profiled. She filed a grievance against Lubbock Independent School District’s Coronado High School to keep her daughter from being sent to the district’s detention school, which she says she eventually won. But her daughter missed school while the case was being resolved, Ogden said, as she refused to send her to the detention school. “Had I not fought for my daughter, she would have suffered that punishment, missing more class, more credits,” Ogden said.

In interviews, more than a dozen Black high school students in Lubbock said they regularly heard other students use the n-word. “Slurs happen all the time – it don’t matter what time of day it is,” said a 10th grader from Coronado High School, whose name is being withheld to protect her privacy.

Gant says the absence of an actual agreement between the federal government and any of the districts means the environment in schools hasn’t fundamentally changed. Those agreements come with teacher training, data collection and penalties for failing to comply. In-school suspension for racist behavior may keep some of it in check, but the changes are cosmetic, she and parents say.

Emails obtained by The Hechinger Report through public records requests show that Kulsoom Naqvi, the OCR investigator based in the Dallas office, conducted staff surveys, data requests and several rounds of interviews throughout much of 2024, but the work came to a halt that fall. Naqvi, who is not technically separated from the Education Department because of ongoing litigation over the mass firings at the Education Department, said she could not comment on the case.

“Given the pace that things were moving, I felt confident that we were going to get a resolution before the end of the year,” said Duggins-Clay, the lawyer who helped file some of the complaints. “Had the election not happened, we would have gotten to a negotiated resolution.” 

Alderson, the spokesperson for Lubbock-Cooper, said that the investigation is still open, but the current superintendent, hired in June, was not aware of any communication from an OCR investigator. She said the district had sought mediation with OCR in spring 2024, but Naqvi had denied that request and had not given Lubbock-Cooper a timeline for resolving the complaints.  

Related: ‘It was the most unfair thing’: Disobedience, discipline and racial disparity 

Just over 20 miles away from downtown Lubbock, in the neighboring town of Slaton, which had its own series of racist incidents and ensuing complaints to OCR, residents say the racial atmosphere has deteriorated even further this year and the school administration has been completely unresponsive. School officials promised to work with local authorities to paint over part of a mural in the center of town that depicts Black men picking cotton under the watch of a white farmer, teachers say. But that never happened. Parents say the n-word is used regularly by white students without consequence in the district, where just 5 percent of students are Black. 

“I’ve witnessed kids on my campus calling Black kids ‘monkeys,’” said a Slaton teacher who grew up in the town and spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for her job. “I’m sorry to say that it’s gotten worse. I feel like more of the extremists have come out.”

Parents say their children continued to be bullied because of their race even after Slaton administrators pledged in 2022 to discipline students for slurs. One mom said her second grader was called an “African monkey” the next year by other kids in his class at Cathelene Thomas Elementary. She says she told the principal, who said, “‘Would you be offended if they called him a cat or something different?’” the mother recalled. “I got up and left. I didn’t even know what to say.”

After that she started homeschooling her kids. She asked to remain anonymous because her children still participate in community events and she is worried they will face retribution.

Cathelene Thomas Principal Margaret Francis did not respond to requests for comment. Superintendent Shelli Conkin said in an email that federal law prevented the district from discussing student-related matters and did not respond to additional questions. “Since I became superintendent in 2023, Slaton ISD has experienced many positive developments that highlight our commitment to students and staff,” she wrote, including facility upgrades, a district fundraising effort and a four-day school week.

Related: Which schools and colleges are being investigated by the Trump administration?

Anzley, meanwhile, is still fighting for justice for his grandson. After the district declined to discipline the girl for making the accusation, he said, and with OCR no longer seeming like an option for redress, he’s hoping to find a lawyer to file a civil rights lawsuit on behalf of his grandson.

The district’s apology and commitment to better train administrators did not undo the damage to Ja’Maury, he and his grandfather said. “People kept on messing with me about it, saying I was a pedophile, saying I was a pervert,” said the middle schooler. “After that I almost hated life, I didn’t even want to live no more after that. That was horrible.”

Last spring, four months after Ja’Maury had been back at McCool, he got into a fight with a boy who called him the n-word on the school bus, he said. This fall, Anzley decided to transfer Ja’Maury from the top-rated school he once loved — which is 9 percent Black — to Dunbar College Preparatory Academy, which is 45 percent Black and received an F rating this year from the Texas Education Agency. Ja’Maury says he feels safer there; Anzley says the move was necessary for his grandson’s mental health but that he preferred the learning opportunities at McCool.

“None of this is new, because the very name Lubbock is the name of a Confederate soldier,” said Gant. “It’s heartbreaking, but it doesn’t surprise me. The aggression of it has been heightened under the Trump administration.” 

She added, “The districts know that OCR has been dismantled so there’s no urgency to fix these issues. It’s on the community, and it’s on the parents to be factual, vocal and not quit.”

Contact senior investigative reporter Meredith Kolodnerat 212-870-1063 or kolodner@hechingerreport.org or on Signal at merkolodner.04.

This story about federal investigations in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Probes into racism in schools stall under Trump appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

State Rep. James Talarico faces an uphill battle in his U.S. Senate bid while 15th Congressional hopeful Bobby Pulido aims to flip the district, but he must first win his primary.

Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. We will be taking the next edition off as we head into Christmas. Subscribe to stay in touch with us during the New Year.

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Compared to their urban and suburban counterparts, a greater share of the rural population lives in states with the most restrictive abortion legislation, according to my analysis of data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that focuses on reproductive rights. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022, it became harder for women to access reproductive care, but the burden often disproportionately hurt rural women.

About 46% of nonmetropolitan, or rural, Americans live in states with either ‘most restrictive’ or ‘very restrictive’ abortion legislation, representing 21.3 million people. Approximately 35% of metro Americans live in these states, representing roughly 99.1 million people. 

State-level abortion legislation is complex; it’s rarely as simple as an outright ban or permit. Abortion policies can include stipulations like waiting periods, ultrasound requirements, gestational duration bans, insurance coverage bans, telehealth bans, and more. To deal with some of this complexity, the Guttmacher dataset groups states into one of seven categories that broadly captures the state’s access to abortion: 

• Most Restrictive
• Very Restrictive
• Restrictive
• Some restrictions/protections
• Protective
• Very Protective
• Most Protective

Click here for the interactive map.

Seventeen states make up the ‘Most Restrictive’ category, and 13 of those states have enacted full bans with few exceptions. Those states include Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Dakota, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. The rural population in those states equals about 15.8 million people. 

Rurality Exacerbates Access Challenges

In the Post-Roe landscape, pre-existing rural challenges are exacerbated by restrictive abortion legislation, a change that has led to increased maternal mortality, particularly for women of color. The new state of abortion in America means people often have to travel much further to get the care they need, often out of state.

An ABC special that featured women who had to travel for abortions highlighted the story of Idaho resident Jennifer Adkins, who was excited when she found out she was pregnant with her first baby. But a 12-week ultrasound showed that continuing her pregnancy would put her life in danger. With financial help from family and friends, Adkins had to travel to the nearest clinic in Oregon to receive the care she needed. 

My previous analysis of abortion data showed that rural travel to abortion clinics increased from 103 miles on average in 2021 to 159 miles on average after Roe v. Wade was overturned. But travel distance varies by state, with women in parts of rural South Texas having to travel up to almost 800 miles to receive care. 

In rural Louisiana, where all the bordering states have also issued abortion bans, the distance to a clinic has increased by almost 400 miles since Roe was overturned. The average rural Louisianan is about 492 miles away from the nearest abortion clinic. The data for that analysis came from the Myers Abortion Facility Database.

In 2024, approximately 12,000 Texans traveled to New Mexico to receive an abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute data. Nearly 7,000 Texans traveled to Kansas, and another 4,000 traveled to Colorado. Texas enacted a near total ban on abortions in July of 2022.
In Idaho, which enacted an abortion ban in August of 2022, 440 people travel to Washington and 140 travel to Oregon for abortions in 2024. (Visit the Guttmacher’s interactive map of abortion travel by state to explore the topic in more detail.)

Abortion and Rural Voters: More Complex Than You Might Think

Every time I write something about how rural people suffer from GOP policies, I get comments and emails from readers saying some version of, “They voted for this.” I take issue with this response for many reasons. It’s unkind, and it erases the thousands of rural voters who don’t support these policies. While some people are going to say you get what you deserve, here’s another way to look at it.

In a previous analysis of voting data from the nine states that had abortion on a ballot measure in 2024, I found that support for Trump didn’t always line up with support for abortion restriction. In 2024, approximately 73% of rural voters supported Trump, but only 61% voted to restrict abortion access. 

While 61% is still a majority vote, the 12-point gap between support for Trump and support for abortion restriction demonstrates that abortion access is a complicated issue for many Americans across the geographic spectrum. This data shows a rural voting base that is willing to split with the broader Republican platform on key issues. 

“All voters are complex,” said Nicholas Jacobs, rural sociologist. “People voted for [Trump], even if they wanted more access to reproductive care or were disappointed that a national standard was lifted by the courts.” 

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The post The Stats on Abortion Access in Rural America appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

Declining numbers of international students coming to study in the U.S. hurts local economies, according to new data released this week. 

International students’ economic contributions declined by $1.1 billion this fall, costing the U.S. nearly 23,000 jobs, NAFSA and JB International found. Those figures are based on a 17% decline in international student enrollment. 

Much of that decline was among graduate and non-degree students, according to the data. A slight increase in undergraduate enrollment this fall bolstered the overall numbers. There are still more than 1 million international students in the U.S.

It’s been a tense time for international students at colleges in the U.S. In the spring, President Donald Trump’s visa revocation and sudden reversal left many reeling, as our Jessica Priest reported in Texas. Trump has also limited visa interviews, told some universities to cap their international student enrollment, imposed travel restrictions on visitors from 19 countries, and made H1-B visas — which allow educated foreign citizens to work in “specialty occupations” — more expensive.

The U.S. must adopt policies to attract and retain international students and realize that job opportunities for them after graduation “are essential to our standing as the top destination for global talent,” said Fanta Aw, NAFSA executive director and CEO. 

“Otherwise, international students will increasingly choose to go elsewhere—to the detriment of our economy, excellence in research and innovation, and global competitiveness and engagement,” Aw said in a release earlier this week. 

Our reporters have been detailing the declines in international students on the campuses they cover — including DePaul University in Illinois and IU Indianapolis. 

[Read more: Case Western Reserve, University of Cincinnati downplay international college student data online] 

A separate report on international students released this week by the Institute of International Education found that their numbers were decreasing even before Trump took office: International student enrollment dropped by 7% in the 2024 school year, according to the report. 

These declines matter — not just for college’s bottom lines, but for the broader economy. International students contributed $42.9 billion to the U.S. economy and supported more than 355,000 jobs last year, according to NAFSA. 

The pre-Trump slump “suggests colleges face other headwinds, such as a slowing global economy, growing competition from nontraditional education hubs, and lingering unease because of the China Initiative,” in addition to current political turmoil, Karin Fischer, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s international education reporter, wrote in her newsletter this week.

India remains the country that sends the most students to the U.S. Marcello Fantoni, Kent State’s vice president of global education, travelled there last spring to talk with prospective students, our Amy Morona reported at Signal Ohio. He told them Kent State is still welcoming — one of the few things he can control amid the broader federal policy changes. 

Still, he said Trump’s actions influenced how the students he spoke with viewed America.

“There is damage done there, and it will take a long time to be fixed,” he told Amy. “A long time.”  

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Elsewhere on Open Campus

From Fort Worth: McKinnon Rice at our partner Fort Worth Report visited students who received paid, two-year auto technician internships through a partnership between Autobahn Fort Worth and Tarrant County College. 

It’s a growing field in the area and offers opportunities to make good money without much college: “A technician hired after an internship starts out earning $24 to $30 per hour, based on their performance, and the wage grows as skills do — highly skilled technicians can make as much as $250,000 to $300,000 per year,” McKinnon wrote.

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The post A slump in international student enrollment appeared first on Open Campus.

The farmers and ranchers who descended on city hall in Jacksonville, Texas, had been told to “leave their pitchforks at the door.” While everyone ultimately arrived unarmed, the attendees of the June 19 board meeting of the Neches & Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District were ready for a fight.

In the hallway outside the boardroom, wives tried to cool their husbands with handheld paper fans that flapped uselessly amid a sea of silver hair — stoic men with sweat-slicked brows beneath weathered cowboy hats, veterans’ insignia, and red MAGA ball caps. Near the chamber door, a uniformed officer stood sweating through his shirt, trying to enforce the fire marshal’s 150-person limit while the crowd swelled behind him. The sign-in table, barely visible through the crush, had already collected nearly 100 names — almost all were there to speak out against the water permits requested by two shadowy LLCs tied to hedge fund manager Kyle Bass and his investment group, Conservation Equity Management Partners. 

The permit applications submitted by Bass’ Redtown Ranch Holdings LLC and Pine Bliss LLC collectively request permission to withdraw approximately 15 billion gallons of water annually from the Carrizo-Wilcox aquifer in East Texas, an amount residents fear will run their wells and farms dry. Without taking off their “Don’t Tread On Me” t-shirts, the citizens of six East Texas counties where Trump took around 80 percent of the vote last November are now turning to their state government to protect them from billionaires. 

Jacksonville sits about two hours southeast of Dallas. With a population just shy of 15,000, it’s the largest city in Cherokee County, one of the three counties represented by the Neches & Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District. The trees in the county are lush and tall, and the Neches and Trinity Rivers  gently flood the landscape with a predictability that local farmers use to their advantage. The county’s tight-knit residents typically vote Republican, they’ve told me over the years, to protect their freedom from government overreach. But as they watch water conflicts breaking out all over Texas, they feel their communities are being overwhelmed by heavy industry and profiteering. Some locals have started making the case that it’s not government overreach for the state to step in when the fight’s not fair. 

Melisa Meador, who identified herself as a wife, mother, Christian, and pecan farmer with 600 acres near Bass’s Redtown Ranch — one of the LLCs looking to pump groundwater — took a prophetic tone in her testimony to the conservation district board. “Those who endlessly accumulate sow the seeds of their own destruction,” Meador said at the podium with the cadence and poetry of a revivalist. “Today’s water barons join river to river, well to well, until all water flows through their meters. Their thirst for profit can never be quenched.”

For his part, Bass feels he’s being mischaracterized. “I’m not coming at this as a robber baron, and I’m not coming at this as someone who intends to do any harm whatsoever,” he told me in the hall after taking a break from being public enemy number one inside the Jacksonville boardroom. “If they come back to me and say, ‘You’re going to do harm, you need to reduce your permit,’ I’m a very reasonable person.”

He’s not shy about his intentions for the water, though he insists that he does not already have buyers lined up. The water, should he get it, could be transported out of East Texas to any number of bone-dry cities west of the Carrizo-Wilcox. Unless the government wants to hang a “closed for business sign on I-35,” he said, there has to be some solution to the statewide water shortage. Really, he said, the amount of water he’s talking about exporting is a drop in the bucket — less than 1 percent of what the state needs. 

“I mean, we’re talking about a large amount of water in this area, but a very small amount of water as it relates to the state,” Bass said. “The state has a real problem.”

He’s right. Droughts have always been part of Texas weather, but with climate change, they’ve grown longer and hotter. Meanwhile, increasingly unpredictable torrents of rain are flooding canyons and tributaries, but doing little to refill the aquifers under parched, hard land. 

West Texas is getting drier, heading toward all-out catastrophe for high desert cities and the state’s treasured spring-fed rivers. The Panhandle and Gulf Coast are scrambling for new water sources as agriculture and industry outpace local basins and aquifers. As drought conditions persist, the primary urban corridor, Interstate 35, has boomed with massive, thirsty tech companies that exhaust local water supplies in metropolis-adjacent exurbs. And the Edwards Aquifer — the massive limestone tank under southwest Texas — cannot support more growth, rendering San Antonio desperate for imported water. Like ravenous wolves, the thirsty cities are on the prowl for water. And there, underlying the lush forests and riverbeds of East Texas, sits the Carrizo-Wilcox — a big, juicy pig, with no one standing guard. 

San Antonio struck first, running its 140-mile Vista Ridge pipeline and pulling 16 billion gallons per year from the Carrizo-Wilcox, causing wells in some rural counties to sputter. Fast-growing Austin suburbs also began sinking proverbial straws in their surrounding counties, laying pipe to keep up with exploding development. In Lee County, just east of Austin, the San Francisco-based water asset management firm Upwell Water announced plans to build a pipeline so big that the cities of Bryan and College Station, along with Texas A&M University, jointly filed suit to stop what they see as a groundwater grab. 

There’s more to the pipeline-palooza than just competition for scarce resources. There are also fortunes to be made. Conservationists, well drillers, and even industry insiders have started comparing the rush on the Carrizo-Wilcox to the oil frenzy of the Texas Permian Basin or the California gold rush. But this time, the boomtowns won’t spring up next to the pumps. The real fortunes — and the real growth — are happening hundreds of miles away, in cities that may never lay eyes on the rural wells quenching their thirst. 

Sitting on top of a gold mine doesn’t mean that every resident of East Texas could be about to strike it rich. The infrastructure to pump and export billions of gallons of water is more than most farmers and ranchers could afford — so they can’t drain their own land. Nor will water exporters need to pay them top dollar for their largest tracts. All an exporter needs is a couple of acres and some antiquated property rights. 

In Texas, landowners enjoy the “rule of capture,” a doctrine based in Roman and Old English law giving them the right to harvest whatever groundwater flows under their property, even if it causes problems for their neighbors. This regularly did cause problems between neighbors — especially if one neighbor was an industrial farmer — so in 1940, Texas established groundwater conservation districts to serve mostly as monitors and arbiters. As regulatory bodies, they are ill equipped to impose strong enough penalties to stop an operation like Bass’. District boundaries often follow county lines, a demarcation which, many have pointed out, means nothing to the water flowing below. If the district tells you no in one county, you can just go next door. 

Some in Texas, including some Republican lawmakers, would like to see that change. Following the June 19 meeting in Jacksonville, the Neches & Trinity Valleys Groundwater Conservation District ultimately opted to kick Bass’s permit request to the State Office of Administrative Hearings, a referee in complex regulatory fights that’s intended to give citizens, companies, and government entities a legal forum for high-stakes disputes — like who gets to pump 15 billion gallons of East Texas groundwater. The hearing has yet to be scheduled, in part because of lawsuits filed by many of the people and businesses who could be affected. But the outcry in Jacksonville sparked a growing awareness that every single Texas politician represents one of two kinds of places: districts that need water, or those that stand to lose it. 

“We cannot compromise one region for another,” State Representative Cecil Bell said to another packed room, this time at the Texas State Capitol in Austin. The House Natural Resources Committee convened on July 15 specifically to talk about Bass’ permits, but found themselves wrestling with the statewide dilemma as well. The 11-hour hearing was like a marble and brass version of the Jacksonville meeting, complete with air conditioning problems in the Capitol annex. Many of those who showed up in cowboy hats to Jacksonville were now in suits and ties. In addition to the 13 members of the committee, six state representatives and two state senators stayed seated on the dais until nearly midnight — a startling show of interest in a topic usually delegated to staffers and lobbyists. 

That night, several expert witnesses and more than one state representative suggested that it might be time to rethink the rule of capture and move toward a more modern means of regulation that can balance the needs of neighbors and water systems across the state. But property rights in Texas are sacrosanct, and folks in rural Texas don’t necessarily trust the government — even the one they voted for — to regulate in their favor.

Industry veteran Johnnie Parker, owner of a wastewater cleaning company near the area Bass wants to pump, attended the hearing in Austin — he was one of the few attendees who’d stuck with jeans and a ball cap instead of a suit — and expressed doubts about whether the Legislature or even the State Office of Administrative Hearings would ever side with rural East Texas. “To me it’s a circus when it comes to these hearings and what not … there’s a lot of things that happen behind closed doors that the general public doesn’t get to see,” Parker said, sitting on a bench in the vaulted, echoing hallway outside the hearing. He rubbed his fingers together to indicate the power of money. “Until the Legislature gets together and decides they want to change the laws on how these things are regulated, this is just a smoke screen.”

Most of the testimony indicated that regulation should fall to the groundwater conservation districts, which would need “more teeth” to protect their jurisdictions. That might be the most politically feasible way forward. The Legislature this year already raised the maximum fine allowed for overpumping, from $10,000 to $25,000. It also considered a bill to increase funding for groundwater research, which could help develop tools for better real-time monitoring of water levels in high-demand aquifers like the Carrizo-Wilcox. High-quality monitoring could give the groundwater conservation districts the data they need to say no to big projects that are deemed unsustainable. Additional legislation could help those denials hold up in court when property owners dispute them. 

Representative Cody Harris represents most of the area where Bass wants to pump and also happens to chair the Texas House Natural Resources Committee. After the hearing, he filed two bills in the special legislative sessions Texas convened in July and August — one bill to prohibit water exports from East Texas and another to fund a study of the Carrizo-Wilcox to determine just how vulnerable it is to over-pumping. The clock ran out on both bills, but Harris feels confident they will fare well in the 2027 Legislature, which many expect to be dominated by water issues. 

But the Austin hearing underscored an uneasy feeling growing in some rural communities. While the science and governance of millions and billions of gallons were extensively debated, barely a question was asked about the millions and billions of dollars to be made selling that water. Back in Jacksonville, speaker after speaker had scoffed at the idea that Bass would walk away from profit if it hurt his rural neighbors. But in Austin, it was only Parker, out in the hall, talking about the influence money would have on the future of water in Texas. For him and others raising concerns, the water wars are the latest example illuminating the power big money can wield over politics when regulation — usually anathema to free-market conservatism — isn’t strong enough to keep it in check.

This tension between political principle and existential threat was evident back in Jacksonville at the hearing on June 19, when Miria Dean — who lives two miles from Redtown Ranch — chatted with others who’d arrived too late or given up trying to get on the list of speakers inside. She told me she saw Bass’ plans as “greed, pure and simple.” What’s legal and what’s right aren’t always the same, she said. Then she paused, smiled, and added, “Happy Juneteenth, right?” We regarded each other, both taking in the significance of the holiday that happened to coincide with the hearing. Slavery was once legal in this country, but it had never been right. 

When I asked who should intervene to stop Bass, Dean recoiled at the idea of big government. But her stance was more complex than that. “We still want the government’s hands off. We don’t want their nose in our business. We want them to step in, but only as far as we want them to step.”

Even capitalism, the guiding ethos of small government, is no longer a free pass. “Capitalism is a great thing,” one speaker said at the Jacksonville hearing. “Unfettered capitalism is bad.” The crowd applauded.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How a billionaire’s plan to export East Texas groundwater sparked a rural uprising on Nov 19, 2025.

By Carla McKeown and Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan

Breckenridge Independent School District voters approved a $39 million bond Tuesday to build a new elementary school, according to the preliminary results released by the Stephens County Elections Office on Tuesday evening, Nov. 4.

The unofficial totals show 886 votes in favor of the bond and 638 votes against. Early voting and absentee voting accounted for 447 votes for the proposal and 342 against.

The bond, which will fund construction of a new school building to replace aging facilities, marks a major milestone for the district after months of community discussion. The school is planned to be for students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade and will replace both East Elementary and South Elementary.

BISD Superintendent Prairie Freeman said she was grateful for the community’s support. “It’s great for the kids at Breckenridge,” she said after the results were announced.

“The community showed up for the kids, so that means a lot,” Freeman said. “We’ll start with the designing and planning phases from here, and then we’ll start construction either late spring or early summer, depending on materials and … weather and things like that.”

Freeman called the victory emotional, crediting local volunteers for their work to pass the measure. “I can’t thank them enough,” she said. “They did it for the kids here in this community.”

Kelsey Cornwall, a parent of three BISD students and treasurer of the Buckaroo PAC, which supported the bond, said she’s excited for the school district’s opportunity to build a new school.

Cornwall said she hopes to continue participating in the process as the project moves forward. “I’d like to be on the bond committee, the Bond Oversight Board, or whatever they’re gonna call that.” she said.

While she was pleased with the outcome, Cornwall said the narrow margin surprised her. “I thought it would pass by a wider margin. I know there were a lot of people that didn’t like the location, but notwithstanding, I thought it would pass.  But we had great turnout. That’s what we wanted, right? One step at a time,” she said.

Jaclyn Morehart, who served on the BISD facility planning committee, said she was surprised that so many people turned out to vote in the election. “I’m excited for a new school, complete with all the updated safety features,” she said.

The Breckenridge Texan will provide updates as the district begins the design and construction process for the new school.

 

Cutline, top photo: Kelsey Cornwall, Prairie Freeman and Brian Kight look at the election results that were posted at the Stephens County Courthouse on Tuesday night. (Photo by Tony Pilkington/Breckenridge Texan)

 

The post BISD’s $39 million bond for new school passes in Nov. 4 election first appeared on Breckenridge Texan.

Some Hood County residents wanted the same power that cities have to set noise limits, but did not secure enough votes.

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