The State of Texas: March 16, 2016

Quote of the Day

“I got guns, food, water—why leave? I got everything I need.”

-Deweyville resident Ray Holden, to CBS News, on why he is refusing to evacuate his flooded home.

Daily Roundup

Water World — Major flooding continued along the Louisiana border in southeast Texas on Tuesday. Earlier this week, Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of disaster in seventeen Texas counties, and with good cause: according to The Weather Channel, “nearly 10 inches of rain fell in parts of the Lone Star State, and in some areas, the impacts were even worse than the catastrophic flooding that occurred in Texas last May.” That’s pretty hard to imagine, until you take a look at some of the photos of the storm-ravaged area. The images are almost post-apocalyptic—boats floating inside bars, water nearly touching the bottom rung of a football field-goal post, and one metaphorically appropriate (and unnerving) scene from Orange, where a giant Lone Star demarcating the Texas-Louisiana state line sits partially submerged in brown floodwater. Orange, the easternmost city in the state, was hit particularly hard, with water levels in the town still rising as late as Tuesday afternoon. According to Houston’s KTRK, emergency management officials in Orange issued a mandatory evacuation for thousands of residents along the Sabine River, and they said “the amount of water flowing south from the Toledo Bend Dam is the most in recorded history.” Abbott will head there on Wednesday to take a tour and assess the damage.

Odd Couple — And then there were two (well, technically there are three if you count Ohio Governor John Kasich, but no one ever really counts Kasich). The latest Republican presidential primary-palooza once again favored Donald Trump, who nearly swept Tuesday’s polls, earning victories in North Carolina, Missouri, Illinois, and Florida, beating Marco Rubio in his own dojo. Rubio officially bowed out of the race in the wake of Super Tuesday Part Three, leaving Republicans to choose between Trump or Texas’s own Ted Cruz (or, you know, Kasich, who actually won Ohio yesterday, but we’ve been over this already). Now, Cruz is ever so close to finally getting what he wants, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, is a schoolyard-style, one-on-one battle with Trump. If only he could figure out how to finagle that pesky Kasich fellow out of the way (just give the people what they want, Kasich!). For what it’s worth, Cruz doesn’t seem like he’s ready to accept a consolation prize as Trump’s vice president anytime soon, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday that he has “absolutely zero interest” in cozying up to Trump as the little spoon.

Racial Tensions — A high school football coach in Frisco resigned after allegedly being super racist to his players. On Tuesday, the Dallas Morning News reported Centennial High School assistant football coach Todd Campbell, who resigned back in January, had been formally accused by students of constantly making unbelievably bigoted statements to his black students. A sampling: “You see that rope over there, you see that tree back there, I’m going to hang you in that tree. I’m going to hang you by your toes.” According to the Morning News, students said Campbell “also stereotyped black students by claiming that they must run fast because they were eating fried chicken or drinking Kool-Aid.” As the Morning News noted, the school district isn’t exactly known for having a racially diverse faculty—10 percent of the district’s students are black, compare to only 4 percent of its teachers. Things aren’t much better for African-Americans in the capital. According to a recently released citizen watchdog report gleaned from Austin Police Department data, cops in Austin appear to be disproportionately targeting minorities. That’s no surprise, but when it’s shown empirically like this, it’s shocking nonetheless. Among the report’s most infuriating findings: “Blacks had a 1 in 6 chance of being searched at stops that led to a citation or an arrest; whites, 1 in 22.”