I can't say I listen to people eat so much that I'm knowledgeable on what sounds weirdest. I mean when I'm eating I'm usually focusing on my food so if the person next to me sounds weird I don't really notice.
They can deny it all they want but our track record in Venezuela is so bad that I don't think anyone is going to believe them.
Kirby Smart: please don't drop us in the polls.
Hell, I usually just think oh sweet a jet.
The simple truth is they probably are going to be missing out on those programs. Certainly that's my experience. However I think it's generally a good thing.
This motherfucker just compared removing Confederate statues to genocide.
I know I had it too but I can't remember it for the life of me. I certainly remember buying it, but I just can't remember what was in it. Can't even that good I guess.
I knew a few back in college but good Lord they were naive. He was a sweet kid but one of them thought we can get rid of the military and just use mercenaries.
Exactly. Anytime a small party runs a presidential campaign it's not only a waste of time but it's a waste of money and resources that could have gone to actual races that could affect actual change. Plus they help to delegitimize and demoralize the movements.
I think you'd have brain damage way before you get to that point
Still can't believe they took back that touchdown due to a completely legal block.
Damn these refs are out to screw over South Carolina looks like.
Is New York school system the largest? I thought it was Los Angeles. I could have sworn I've read that before.
Well they do already. Look at the fossil fuel industry.
The common answer used to be drug legalization because theoretically that would undercut their financial base, but from what I understand they've Diversified to the point where I don't think that would work anymore.
Game summary of the South Alabama Jaguars vs. Northwestern State Demons NCAAF game, final score 87-10, from September 12, 2024 on ESPN.
Yes you read that correctly. 87 point. In a football game.
Seriously. I'm watching these new kickoffs and it's just silly. Like I'm not against the concept but it's so clearly almost a punt. It's it's just a hair away from it. Just make it a punt it'd be so much simpler.
Allred’s sharp divergence from Beto O’Rourke’s more active campaign style has stirred dissent among some Democrats. His allies say it’s working.
>Allred’s sharp divergence from Beto O’Rourke’s more active campaign style has stirred dissent among some Democrats. His allies say it’s working.
>Six years after Beto O'Rourke’s electrifying Senate campaign set the standard for Texas Democrats seeking statewide office, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred is taking a completely different approach in his own bid to oust U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
>Allred, a third-term Dallas congressman, has been far less visible on the campaign trail, opting for events with smaller and more curated audiences in the major cities and select suburbs, rather than the casual town hall-style rallies O'Rourke held in every corner of the state. And instead of O’Rourke’s unapologetic liberal stands which activated legions of young voters, Allred has adopted a more calibrated message aimed at winning over moderates. He’s running ads that portray him as "tough" on the border and willing to work across the aisle, while keeping his distance from his party's standard-bearers, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
>Allred's sharp divergence from O'Rourke's more active and freewheeling style has stirred dissent and even signs of panic among a segment of Texas Democratic activists who say Allred should be holding more rallies, small-dollar fundraisers and other publicly accessible events. The more buttoned-up approach, they argue, is unlikely to inspire the sort of grassroots energy that helped O'Rourke build a juggernaut volunteer turnout operation and come within three points of ending Texas Democrats’ statewide drought
Students’ scores in a test that gauges their English skills have been low since a redesign introduced computer scoring.
"English-learning students’ scores on a state test designed to measure their mastery of the language fell sharply and have stayed low since 2018 — a drop that bilingual educators say might have less to do with students’ skills and more with sweeping design changes and the automated computer scoring system that were introduced that year.
English learners who used to speak to a teacher at their school as part of the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System now sit in front of a computer and respond to prompts through a microphone. The Texas Education Agency uses software programmed to recognize and evaluate students’ speech.
Students’ scores dropped after the new test was introduced, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. In the previous four years, about half of all students in grades 4-12 who took the test got the highest score on the test’s speaking portion, which was required to be considered fully fluent in English. Since 2018, only about 10% of test takers have gotten the top score in speaking each year."
Future Texas therapists must complete internships to start their careers, but there’s not enough providers to mentor all of the students.
"It was early 2022, and Kiany Casillas was in a panic. It had been two years since she and her newborn daughter had followed her husband from California to the Texas Panhandle, and during that time, she had enrolled at Texas Tech University Health Science Center to pursue a career as a psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner.
Casillas is considered the perfect student for Texas Tech’s online program because she lives in the rural city of Dalhart, an hour and a half northwest of Amarillo, and is willing to work there when she graduates. However, a year had passed, and Casillas and the school had yet to find a supervisor for her necessary clinical hours, and the deadline was fast approaching.
“I was anxious, nervous, and baffled. How can I help people if nobody is willing to help me? You know, I was just kind of sad,” Casillas said.
Supervised clinical hours are considered an essential part of the mental health field. They allow students to learn on the job while the supervisor, known as a preceptor in the medical field, assumes the risk of liability. However, only a limited number of mental health providers seem willing to take on this responsibility."
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who is facing off against Allred in his reelection campaign, has worked to tie Allred to Harris’ political record.
"On a recent appearance on MSNBC, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred was asked how Vice President Kamala Harris’ presumptive rise to the top of the party’s ticket was affecting his campaign in Texas to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
Allred’s response was polite, but muted: “Vice President Harris was a member of the congressional Black Caucus and I’ve known her for some time and I support her nomination.”
That five-second comment was all the time Allred spent discussing Harris. He quickly pivoted for the rest of the seven-minute segment to attacking Cruz for blocking bipartisan border security and immigration bills, opposing abortion access and leaving the state for Cancun when millions of Texans had lost power in their homes in 2021.
Harris’s impending nomination has injected the November election with renewed enthusiasm among Democrats, who are hoping the historic nature of her candidacy as a woman of color could also boost down-ballot candidates. But in Republican-dominated Texas, Allred — who has been running his campaign as a centrist — is not flocking to her side."
Gov. Greg Abbott has spent the duration of the hurricane on a pre-scheduled trip to meet with foreign diplomats in Asia, leaving Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as acting governor.
>Texas is receiving federal aid for Hurricane Beryl later than needed because state leaders were slow to request an official disaster declaration from the White House, President Joe Biden told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday.
>With Gov. Greg Abbott out of the country on an economic development trip in Asia, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has served as acting governor amid the storm, making him responsible for putting in the state’s request for aid.
>A White House spokesperson told the Chronicle that officials had tried multiple times to reach Abbott and Patrick, and Biden said he only connected with Patrick Tuesday, after which he issued the disaster declaration. Beryl came ashore on Texas' Gulf Coast early Monday morning, bringing heavy rain and winds that wreaked havoc over Houston and other parts of southeast Texas.
After the Amarillo City Council balked at such an ordinance last year, residents collected signatures for a ballot measure.
>Amarillo residents will vote on a so-called abortion travel ban in November, one of the few times Texas voters will have a say on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.
>Supporters of the measure, who gathered 6,300 verified signatures to petition for approval of the ordinance, submitted their request to city officials to have it placed on the Nov. 5 ballot after the Amarillo City Council rejected it last month, per local rules.
>We see you, hard-core NPR readers — just because it's summer doesn't mean it's all fiction, all the time. So we asked around the newsroom to find our staffers' favorite nonfiction from the first half of 2024. We've got biography and memoir, health and science, history, sports and more.
>LOS ANGELES – President Biden on Saturday night said he expects the winner of this year’s presidential election will likely have the chance to fill two vacancies on the Supreme Court – a decision he warned would be “one of the scariest parts” if his Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, is successful in his bid for a second term.
The group announced Wednesday it raised $120 million in capital to start a stock exchange in Dallas this year.
A group of financial firms and investors is planning to launch a Texas-based private market stock exchange and offer traders an alternative to the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.
The group, which includes BlackRock, Citadel Securities and about two dozen investors, raised approximately $120 million of capital to create the Texas Stock Exchange, which would be headquartered in Dallas. They are now seeking registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to operate as a national securities exchange later this year.
“Texas and the other states in the southeast quadrant have become economic powerhouses. Combined with the demand we are seeing from investors and corporations for expanded alternatives to trade and list equities, this is an opportune time to build a major, national stock exchange in Texas,” said James Lee, founder and CEO of TXSE Group.
Resuming the bonfire was “not in the interest” of Texas A&M, said school President Mark Welsh III.
After a monthslong review, Texas A&M University decided not to bring back the student bonfire tradition it discontinued 25 years ago after a deadly accident, President Mark Welsh III said Tuesday.
For decades, students built a 60-foot bonfire every year ahead of football matches between A&M and the University of Texas at Austin. The tradition was suspended after tragedy struck in 1999, when a stack of logs collapsed in the middle of the night, killing 12 people and injuring dozens, some severely.
Welsh said reviving the tradition would not be in the best interest of the university.
“After careful consideration, I decided that Bonfire, both a wonderful and tragic part of Aggie history, should remain in our treasured past,” Welsh said.
>ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.
>Missouri could soon join them.
>If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.
>ST. LOUIS — Five states have banned ranked choice voting in the last two months, bringing the total number of Republican-leaning states now prohibiting the voting method to 10.
>Missouri could soon join them.
>If approved by voters, a GOP-backed measure set for the state ballot this fall would amend Missouri’s constitution to ban ranked choice voting.
>Andy Kim couldn’t rest one evening last September.
>“I didn't get a single minute of sleep that night,” he recalled in an interview with NPR, “I really felt like I had to do something and really show people that, you know, when there's these problems in our politics, that there are people who want to step up and try to fix it.”
>The problem was his fellow New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bob Menendez. Last fall, Menendez was indicted for the second time on corruption charges. The news might not have rocked most voters in New Jersey — where as many as 80% of its residents said they viewed the state’s politicians as at least “a little” corrupt, according to a May 2023 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll.
>MUMBAI, India — Two days before police finally came to arrest him, the Rev. Stan Swamy recorded a video of himself speaking directly into the camera.
>"They want to put me out of the way," the ailing 83-year-old Jesuit priest said.
>His voice sounded frail. But what he was saying was explosive.
>The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he said, was targeting him in retaliation for his advocacy on behalf of Indigenous people in Indian jails. A sociologist as well as a Roman Catholic clergyman, Swamy had recently published a study of 3,000 people jailed for being members of banned Maoist groups. He found that 97% of them had no such affiliation and that many of their trials were held without lawyers, in a language they didn't understand. He'd filed a case on their behalf in the state court of Jharkhand, where he lived. All of this had embarrassed the government, he said.
Lawmakers are struggling to balance demands for medicinal cannabis products with a wildly growing market that is outpacing meaningful regulation.
>Lawmakers are struggling to balance demands for medicinal cannabis products with a wildly growing market that is outpacing meaningful regulation.
>When Texas state Sen. Charles Perry sat down this week in a packed room at the state Capitol to hear testimony on whether to ban some psychoactive hemp products from being sold in the state, he already knew what was coming.
>The Lubbock Republican’s 2019 agricultural hemp legislation — a bipartisan, farmer-friendly bill — had opened up the state’s hemp industry and, in doing so, touched off a massive new consumable hemp market in Texas as well.
>JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party has lost its outright majority for the first time in a devastating blow for the party once led by Nelson Mandela. The ANC has dominated South African politics since winning in the first post-apartheid elections 30 years ago.
>The ANC was braced for a disappointing outcome, predicted by polls before Wednesday’s elections, but the final results are even more sobering. It won 40 percent of the vote, falling from 57% in 2019.
WASHINGTON, May 28 (Reuters) - Republican Jay Furman will face Democratic U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar in the November general election, after defeating Texas rancher Lazaro Garza on Tuesday in a party primary run-off election. Furman, a military veteran, won the Republican nomination for Texas' 28th congressional district, according to the Associated Press. He led Garza by an overwhelming 64% to 36% with 45% of votes counted.
Cuellar and his wife were indicted on federal charges accusing them of accepting bribes meant to benefit an Azerbaijani state-owned energy company and a bank based in Mexico. They have denied wrongdoing.
The firings come after state leaders criticized universities for not doing enough to enforce the ban. Students say UT-Austin has already overcorrected.
The University of Texas at Austin has laid off dozens employees who used to work in diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The university fired about 60 people and some the offices where they worked are expected to close by May 31, according to a joint letter from the Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors and the Texas chapter of the NAACP. The firings were first reported by the Austin American-Statesman, citing people familiar with the decision.
UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell said in an email Tuesday that the school was also disbanding the Division of Campus and Community Engagement, which provided support and resources for “those who may face the most significant challenges in accessing” education, according to the department’s website. The AAUP and NAACP said about 40 of the people who were fired used to work in this department