The State of Texas: June 9, 2016

Quote of the Day

“Valedictorian, 4.5 GPA, full tuition paid for at UT, 13 cords/medals, nice legs, oh and I’m undocumented.”

—recent Crockett High School (in Austin) graduate Mayte Lara Ibarra in a tweet last week. KXAN reported on Wednesday that Ibarra’s tweet had gone viral, and the high-achieving teen was catching some serious heat on social media from people angry at her for being undocumented. Still, Ibarra seems to have a lot going for her at the moment other than finding herself on the wrong end of Twitter’s pack mentality. Haters gonna hate.

Daily Roundup

No Veep for Perry
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told Bloomberg in an interview on Wednesday that former Texas Governor Rick Perry won’t be his running mate. But Trump did have some nice things to say about the man who once called him a “cancer on conservatism.” In fact, Trump said he’d still like Perry to be “involved” somehow in his administration if he’s elected. “I think he’s very good,” Trump told Bloomberg. “I think he’s very very good. He’s also very good on the border.” As the Dallas Morning News notes, that bit of praise is particularly interesting considering Trump certainly didn’t think Perry was “very good on the border” less than a year ago, saying in a tweet in July 2015 that “Rick Perry failed at the border” and that “He needs a new pair of glasses to see the crimes committed by illegal immigrants.” Trump’s updated-yet-unspecific praise likely has Perry feeling flattered, but he’s got to be at least a little bummed out that he won’t be sharing the ticket with Trump. Perry officially endorsed Trump shortly after Ted Cruz dropped out of the race, and he made it clear that he wanted to be considered in the Trump veepstakes.

Fighting On
Uber and Lyft took their beef with what they feel are overly strict regulations for ride-hailing companies, like the ordinance that recently passed in Austin, to the state legislature during a daylong hearing on Wednesday. According to the Texas Tribune, the companies are pushing for a statewide law that would keep cities from putting ordinances in place that require Uber and Lyft drivers to submit to city background checks. Both companies followed through on their threats to abandon Austin when one such ordinance passed a citywide vote last month, a threat that at times made Uber and Lyft look like both playground bullies and petty little kids who pick up the ball and leave if the game suddenly isn’t going their way. Before a seemingly receptive House Committee on Business and Industry, they argued that it would actually be better for everyone if regulations were less strict across the state so they could operate in every city, claiming ride-hailing services are safer than normal, app-less taxis, but they still didn’t provide any stats or numbers to back that up. They’re clearly still bitter about the loss in Austin, which is understandable considering they threw a combined $9.1 million at voters only to take a twelve-point “L” on election day. According to the Austin American-Statesman, representatives from Uber and Lyft never directly mentioned the blowout, referring to it only as the “situation in Austin.” Sounds like someone’s still salty.

No Bill
A Tarrant County grand jury chose not to indict an Arlington police officer who was fired after shooting and killing an unarmed African-American teen in August, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Brad Miller was a rookie officer with the Arlington Police Department when he fatally shot nineteen-year-old Christian Taylor, a football player for Angelo State, inside a car dealership Taylor was suspected of breaking into. An autopsy report found that Taylor had traces of synthetic marijuana in his system at the time of his death—a drug that can sometimes have hallucinatory effects—and Taylor was reportedly acting erratically. But Arlington police investigators found that former officer Miller also acted somewhat erratically, failing to communicate with other officers at the scene, going forward without a plan in place, and generally exercising poor judgment throughout the incident. As a result, he shot and killed an unarmed kid. Miller was fired days after the shooting. According to the Star-Telegram, in the last two decades there have been exactly zero police officers indicted in Tarrant County for fatally shooting someone while on duty. An attorney for Taylor’s family told the newspaper that they are considering filing a civil lawsuit.