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Despite $32 Billion State Surplus Texas GOP Lawmakers Fail to Increase School Funding – but Are Working to Cut Taxes

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The Republican majority in the Texas state legislature declined to give schools any additional funding this year, despite the state having a $32 billion surplus, leading one schools superintendent to grant modest pay raises to teachers even if it causes deficit spending, and a state-installed superintendent to announce cuts of up to 600 jobs. Lawmakers in the Lone Star State are focused on tax cuts.

Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott has called on lawmakers in special session to cut property taxes and expand the state’s school voucher program, as the Texas Tribune reported last month.

“Lawmakers didn’t approve extra money this year to help schools balance their budgets or pay for raises, despite having an unprecedented $32 billion surplus in their hands — and even after Gov. Greg Abbott commissioned a task force last year to improve teacher pay and retention,” the Tribune added Monday. “The political fight over school vouchers derailed the only school funding bill that had a chance of passing.”

READ MORE: ‘Quelle Surprise’: Trump Criminal Co-Defendant Pushes for Court Delay – Just as Legal Experts Predicted

Temple Independent School District Superintendent Bobby Ott told The Texas Tribune, “We’ve taken the position that in the absence of state leadership, we’re going to take care of our staff, even if it means that we have a deficit budget.”

To give teachers a slim 3% increase will cost the district about $2 million. The money will come from cuts elsewhere and from the school district’s savings.

Meanwhile over in Houston, the state-installed schools superintendent, a former charter schools CEO who also ran the Dallas schools district, announced on Friday cuts of 500-600 jobs, KTRK reported.

READ MORE: DeSantis Brags His Climate Change Plan Is to Throw Out Biden’s

“This is about making sure we ‘right-size’ central office and also work most efficiently. You’ve seen in other presentations that the central office numbers and expenditures have increased 61% in six years,” Houston ISD superintendent Mike Miles told KTKR.

The Texas Tribune adds, “Miles estimated the cuts from academic departments total 30% of current positions, about 3% of which were already vacant.”

“Reorganizations are hard. There are real people behind the numbers,” Miles said Friday. “We want to make sure that we do this in a way that’s respectful but also in enough time for people to apply for other jobs.”

The Tribune also reports that “Miles has been vocal about trimming a central office he described as ‘bloated’ and ‘amorphous’ upon his appointment last month to run Houston ISD by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath. But Friday’s announcement offered the first glimpse into which departments will be impacted by his plans.”

On Thursday the Austin-American Statesman reported, Texas House Democrats “unveiled a $20.9 billion plan to deliver property tax relief to Texans through tax compression, increasing the homestead exemption and offering renters annual rebates. The new plan would also build annual teacher pay raises into the state’s school financing system.”

The bill’s sponsor, Democratic state Rep. John Bryant, said: “Our effort is one that recognizes that you can’t talk about property taxes without talking about public education.”

 

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‘What You Said Were Lies’: Democrat Shreds RFK Jr. in Fiery Exchange

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September 4, 2025

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U.S. Senator Michael Bennet dismantled Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s testimony in a blistering Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday, accusing him of peddling “lies.”

In the heated debate, Senator Bennet, saying he quoted manufacturers on vaccine safety, blasted Kennedy.

“I quoted them today. What I said was accurate. What you said were lies,” Bennet charged.

The conversation got more heated, with Kennedy demanding Bennet answer his questions, a tactic the HHS chief has used before.

“You’re evading the question,” Kennedy said.

READ MORE: Judges Slam SCOTUS as Trump Demands High Court Reverse His Tariff Defeats

“No, I’m asking the questions here,” Bennet declared.

“You’re evading that question,” Kennedy repeated. “I asked you a question.”

“I’m asking the questions, Mr. Kennedy, on behalf of parents and schools and teachers all over the United States of America who deserve so much better than your leadership,” Bennet said, blasting Kennedy.

“That’s what this conversation is about,” he added.

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Rubio Says US Blew Up Alleged Drug Boat ‘On the President’s Orders’ — Legality Questioned

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Judges Slam SCOTUS as Trump Demands High Court Reverse His Tariff Defeats

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September 4, 2025

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A dozen federal judges are criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court, and in particular Chief Justice John Roberts, for what they say is a pattern of overturning their rulings in cases involving President Donald Trump’s policies while offering little explanation — or none at all. Their rare rebuke comes just as the President has demanded the high court reverse lower court rulings yet again, this time in a pivotal case: Trump’s massive tariffs, which many legal experts and several courts have already deemed unconstitutional.

“Lower court judges are handed contentious cases involving the Trump administration,” NBC News reports in an exclusive. “They painstakingly research the law to reach their rulings. When they go against Trump, administration officials and allies criticize the judges in harsh terms. The government appeals to the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority.”

“And then the Supreme Court, in emergency rulings, swiftly rejects the judges’ decisions with little to no explanation,” according to NBC News. “A short rebuttal from the Supreme Court, they argue, makes it seem like they did shoddy work and are biased against Trump.”

READ MORE: Rubio Says US Blew Up Alleged Drug Boat ‘On the President’s Orders’ — Legality Questioned

One judge called the current environment “inexcusable,” lamenting the SCOTUS justices “don’t have our backs.”

NBC noted that when federal judges rule against Trump and his administration, “they are frequently targeted by influential figures in MAGA world and sometimes Trump himself, who called for a judge who ruled against him in a high-profile immigration case to be impeached. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has said the administration is the victim of a ‘judicial coup.'”

At the center of the controversy is the Supreme Court’s growing reliance on its ‘shadow docket,’ a mechanism the Trump administration has repeatedly used to its advantage.

READ MORE: ‘Fantasyland’: Democrat Denounces Trump’s ‘Unhinged’ Plan for ‘Personal Greed and Power’

Instead of filing a petition for the Supreme Court to hear a case and waiting for oral arguments to be scheduled if it agrees, Trump has often bypassed the process — nearly two dozen times since January — by going directly to the justices with emergency requests.

Seventeen times the Supreme Court has granted Trump’s emergency requests.

Late on Wednesday night, the Trump administration again went to SCOTUS, this time demanding the justices overturn the rulings of two separate courts, which had deemed his tariffs unlawful and unconstitutional.

On Friday, in a 7-4 ruling, a federal appeals court affirmed an earlier U.S. Court of International Trade decision that Trump’s sweeping and unilateral imposition of tariffs exceeded his authority.

The Supreme Court has yet to respond.

READ MORE: ‘Monsters’: The Five Trump Cabinet Secretaries a Top Political Scientist Wants Impeached

 

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Rubio Says US Blew Up Alleged Drug Boat ‘On the President’s Orders’ — Legality Questioned

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September 3, 2025

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U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is acknowledging that the United States, on orders from President Donald Trump, executed a military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug cartel’s boat loaded with “poison,” and says the U.S. will continue to do so.

“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up,” Rubio told reporters, according to The Washington Post’s John Hudson. “And it’ll happen again.”

“What will stop them is when you blow them up, when you get rid of them,” Rubio also said (video below). “The President of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations, this one was operating an international waters headed towards the United States to flood our country with poison, and under President Trump, those days are over.”

Hudson also reported, “When asked if the US sent a warning to the boat before it was destroyed, killing everyone onboard, Rubio insisted that the vessel, like others carrying drugs, posed an ‘immediate threat to the United States’ providing the right to destroy it.”

READ MORE: ‘Fantasyland’: Democrat Denounces Trump’s ‘Unhinged’ Plan for ‘Personal Greed and Power’

Critics, questioning the President’s legal authority, were outraged that the occupants were not arrested and tried through the courts, but the Secretary of State defended the President’s actions.

The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki asked, “what’s the legal authority that allows the US military to execute ‘drug traffickers’ whenever it wants?”

“So despite no Authorization for Use of Military Force and no possible invocation of the War Powers Act, the U.S. military is now going to be drone striking people alleged to be committing a crime?” asked attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. “Again, on what legal authority?”

Constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis added, “This is not heroic; it’s criminal. Make no mistake: denying people due process who are not enemies of the United States through extra-judicial executions is repugnant to everything this country is supposed to stand for like the rule of law.”

READ MORE: ‘Monsters’: The Five Trump Cabinet Secretaries a Top Political Scientist Wants Impeached

The Washington Post earlier reported that the “U.S. military strike on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea killed 11 people Tuesday, according to President Donald Trump, who claimed that the ‘Narcoterrorists’ targeted in the operation were affiliated with a criminal gang that he says acts at the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.”

“The attack occurred ‘while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States,’ Trump wrote on social media. ‘ … Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!'”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Un-American’: GOP Senator Blasted for ‘Racist’ Speech Declaring America Belongs ‘Only’ to Us

 

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