QUOTE OF THE DAY
“No need to imagine #Hillary facing a real crisis…we know how she handles tough situations.”
—The Texas GOP Twitter account, posted alongside a famous photo of Clinton in the Situation Room during the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The tweet was replying to a post from Clinton’s account: “Just imagine Donald Trump in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. We can’t afford that kind of risk.” The Texas GOP reply was quickly deleted, probably because it seemed to indicate that Clinton was preferable to Trump.
BIG NEWS
Time for Litigation
It’s been about one year since the Clock Boy formerly known as Ahmed Mohamed was arrested and questioned by police for bringing a homemade clock to his high school in Irving, and now Mohamed’s father (Clock Dad, if you will) is suing the city of Irving, the school district, and the school’s principal, according to the Dallas Morning News. On Monday in Dallas, the fourteen-year-old Ahmed said at a press conference announcing the federal lawsuit that he still gets “a lot of hate,” including “death threats.” The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated Ahmed’s rights when police pulled him out of school and put him in handcuffs, accusing him of bringing a bomb to school. He was still charged with possession of a hoax bomb and suspended from school for three days (the charges were later dropped). The suit also claims Ahmed was discriminated against because he’s an African-American Muslim. The incident sparked international outrage, from both supporters of Ahmed and, apparently, Islamophobes. In a statement to the Morning News, Irving ISD denied that it violated Ahmed’s rights. As the Morning News notes, the U.S. Department of Justice is currently reviewing complaints made against the school district alleging harassment and unequal discipline based on religion and race. According to the Washington Post, the law firm representing Ahmed, Hutchinson & Stoy, is also representing a Baylor student in her Title IX lawsuit against the university alleging negligence after she was sexually assaulted by a member of the football team.
MEANWHILE, IN TEXAS
Heat Wave
Summer in Texas is hot. This is one of those “death and taxes” certainties. But on Monday, it was hot. So hot, in fact, that the Texas electric grid shattered a state record for energy consumption at any given time. According to the Houston Chronicle, at Monday’s peak a little after 4 p.m., demand hit 70,169 megawatts, topping the previous Texas high of 69,877 megawatts, set on August 10, 2015. The National Weather Service declared a heat advisory in 30 Texas counties on Monday, and the high temps won’t let up this week. It’s supposed to hit or top 100 degrees just about every day in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, and heat indices across the state could be as high as 115 degrees. On Monday in Dallas, the high temperature was 106 degrees—the hottest temp recorded on the first day of high school football fall practice in thirteen years, the Dallas Morning News reports. According to the Chronicle, the energy consumption record could be broken again as soon as Tuesday. Stay cool.
Cruzin’ Back
It’s been weird for Ted Cruz ever since his controversial speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last month, when he didn’t endorse Donald Trump and got chewed out by his own state’s GOP delegates. Since then, his post-2018 Senate status has come into question, with Democrat golden-boy Joaquín Castro hot on his tail and fellow Republicans searching for a challenger. On Monday, CNN reported that there is “a quiet Republican campaign” to boot Cruz, with GOP donors and politicians trying to get U.S. Representative Michael McCaul, of Austin, to run against Cruz in two years. So here is Ted Cruz, once again making his way around Texas to gather support. According to the Texas Tribune, Cruz will be meeting with community leaders and businessmen from Beaumont to El Paso, with stops in between in San Antonio, Laredo, Lubbock, Dallas, and Tyler, including visits to the Texas Instruments headquarters and the Space X launch site. On Monday, Cruz met with space industry leaders in Houston and toured NASA. He also launched a Snapchat account that will be documenting his travels, so if Snapchats from Ted Cruz are something you need in your life right now, it’s a thing.
Baby Genius
Twelve-year-old Jeremy Shuler, of Grand Prairie, is not like other kids. For starters, he already has a GED, which he earned this year from a Texas Tech University program. And he’ll be heading off to college this fall at Cornell, according to the Ithaca Journal. Again, kid’s only twelve. With a bowl cut. But here’s how crazy-smart Jeremy is, according to Texas Tech Today: he could talk at six months old; by the time he was two, he was bilingual, fluent in English and Korean, and he could read on his own; he started taking high school-level classes at age eight; two years later, he was enrolled in Advanced Placement classes; in 2014, he took the SATs and scored in the 99.6 percentile; in March, he was accepted to Cornell. He’ll major in applied and engineering physics and minor in mathematics. He’s also looking forward to the “good food” at Cornell, which he told Texas Tech Today was a very important factor in his college decision. He’ll fit in on campus just fine.
WHAT WE’RE READING
Tim Kaine is in Texas right now Texas Tribune
A few weeks after 30 goats were shot to death at a Lubbock ISD barn, ten more goats there were killed by dogs Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
A UTSA twirler is the first male to make it onto the U.S. championship twirling team San Antonio Express-News
The school campus leveled by the West fertilizer explosion is rebuilt and ready to open this month Waco Tribune
Feral hogs are messing with Dallas’s Great Trinity Forest WFAA
