The State of Texas: April 6, 2016

Quote of the Day

“There is a constant dripping sound. It’s just the excrement from the caterpillars drippin’ on everybody’s head.”

—Bill McKelvie, of Livingston’s Cho-Yeh Summer Camp, to KHOU. Not to sound alarmist, but CATERPILLARS HAVE INVADED THE TOWN OF LIVINGSTON AND THEY ARE POOPING EVERYWHERE!(!!!)

Daily Roundup

Queen Fey—A San Antonio-based company peddling faux-Beyoncé merchandise woke up like a defendant in a federal lawsuit on Tuesday. Per Reuters, Beyonce slapped “Feyonce,” a company that sells Beyoncé-themed apparel spelled with an “F” instead of a “B” (so creative, right?), with a copyright infringement lawsuit, alleging the business “willfully traded upon the goodwill and notoriety of Beyonce, arguably one of the most famous musical artists and entrepreneurs in the world,” according to the complaint. Feyonce apparently offers items like a coffee mug bearing the phrase “he put a ring on it,” a play on Beyoncé’s famous lyric. Beyoncé did not find this flattering, and is demanding an injunction to stop Feyonce from operating. According to the Daily Mail, Bey also wants “an order awarding her all profits the company made from the illegal products being sold along with other damages for profiting off her name without any permission.” The queen has spoken. But Feyonce may not go down without a fight. According to the complaint, one of the defendants has applied for a copyright on “Feyonce.”

Wall Ball—Presidential candidate Donald Trump explained on Tuesday how he planned to make Mexico build that wall—and his plan, should it ever come to fruition, could be devastating to Texas. In a two-page memo to the Washington Post, Trump finally broke down what had long been only a popular call-and-response rallying cry into more concrete terms. And the terms are ridiculous. If Mexico were to resist the wall construction, Trump said he would threaten to deport all eleven million undocumented Mexicans living in America, and would cut the billions of dollars funneling south of the border in wire transfers from Mexicans living abroad. Writes the Post: “the feasibility of Trump’s plan is unclear both legally and politically, and it would test the bounds of a president’s executive powers in seeking to pressure another country.” According to the San Antonio Express-News, this would have a “disproportionate effect” on Texas. The Express-News surveyed economists and policy analysts, and the overwhelming conclusion was that Trump’s plan to choke Texas’s largest trading partner would spell disaster on both sides of the border. One economist told the Express-News that when he heard Trump’s plan, “his head really just started spinning.”

The Return—Seventeen years after he was convicted for murdering rich widow Marjorie Nugent in Carthage, Bernie Tiede is back in court. Tiede became something of a cultural obsession after his crime was the subject of a popular Richard Linklater film (based on a Texas Monthly story). Tiede had his life sentence reduced two years ago and has been free on bond ever since, but his re-sentencing hearing starts on Wednesday. According to the Dallas Morning News, Tiede’s attorneys will “argue that he was the victim, not only of Nugent’s allegedly abusive behavior toward him, but of years of sexual molestation at the hands of a relative.” They’ll also argue he was blackmailed into signing a confession. By the end of the new trial, Tiede could be a free man. But according to the Houston Chronicle, Tiede Fatigue may be spreading across Texas. The owner of the Carthage funeral home where Tiede used to work told the Chronicle that “the locals just want the hoopla to go away.” In case you are also too tired of Tiede to do some digging, the Austin American-Statesman has a nice, brief explainer listing the things you need to know about the latest chapter in his long legal saga.