🧵Since the pandemic, several Texas school boards have seen ideologically driven conservatives win supermajorities. One key, if often overlooked, factor in election outcomes is how those districts elect their trustees. propublica.org/article/texas-… @propublica and @TexasTribune found that the use of at-large voting, which has been challenged in the courts for its role in diluting the vote of residents of color, has helped facilitate rightwing takeovers in 6 suburban districts where students of color are the majority.

NEW: A TX school board member pored through her district’s curriculum for signs of indoctrination, but found nothing. The hardliners who asked her to run dismissed the news. "It didn't fit the narrative they were trying to push." propublica.org/article/texas-… Courtney Gore campaigned as a strong Republican voice on the Granbury school board, pledging to rid the district of CRT. A year later, she became convinced that she had been part of a plan to weaken local trust in the school district and lay the groundwork for vouchers.

Texas law requires courts to send mental health commitments—for adults & juveniles—to the FBI's background check system.

After an 18-year-old carried out the Uvalde massacre, @KiahCollier & I set out to find out if juvenile records were being reported.

They weren't. It took us weeks to get an answer as we found ourselves inside a system beset by vague guidance, conflicting laws and confusion in local courts across the state.

DPS, which runs the state clearinghouse for such records, refused to answer a dozen inquiries over six weeks.

"Saying the quiet part out loud"

Audio we obtained of an internal meeting with school librarians shows Granbury superintendent directed removals of LGBTQ, transgender books.

NEW with @Mike_Hixenbaugh and @NBCNews
propublica.org/article/were-g… "I’m cutting to the chase on a lot of this,” Superintendent Jeremy Glenn told librarians in a Jan. 10 meeting. “It’s the transgender, LGBTQ and the sex — sexuality — in books."

Book challenges are about more than just books: Library censorship is fueling political gains, and politicizing school board races in rural Texas. For @propublica and @TexasTribune texastribune.org/2022/02/07/lgb… Running on a platform of “Education Not Indoctrination,” a pair of far right candidates swept to power in the Granbury ISD in Nov. in the most politicized school board race many could remember.

Michele Carew was a 14-year veteran of Texas election administration. The president of the state association. She had rave reviews from GOP officials in her old job in Aransas County. But hardline conservatives in Hood County have spent the last year trying to force her out.🧵 What is happening in Hood County, an hour southwest of Fort Worth, shows the virulent distrust and unyielding political pressure elections administrators face even in communities where Trump earned 81% of the vote.

It’s part of a disturbing trend. propublica.org/article/gods-w…

Power companies in Texas often get what they want when it comes to regulations, like a proposed rule that should have made power plants safer in winter. That is, until the state's biggest electricity producer got hold of it. (THREAD). propublica.org/article/power-… 2/ In 2011, after monster winter storms knocked Texas power plants offline, sparking rolling blackouts, regulators hired consultants to help learn how to better protect the electric grid from cold weather storms.

Been off for a few days, but still marveling at what my colleagues on the ProPublica/Texas Tribune unit have produced in the last week or so! Thanks to dogged reporting from @KiahCollier and @renLarson_, a Silicon Valley lender announced it would drop pandemic-era lawsuits against borrowers and cap interest rates at 36%. Opportun Inc. only took action after Kiah and Ren started asking questions

propublica.org/article/they-s…

This is Carlos Torres. His family brought him from Mexico to Texas when he was a baby. He volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army in 1972 and four years later was honorably discharged. But he never finished his citizenship process and in 1994 was arrested on marijuana charges. He was deported to Mexico and since 2010 has been living in Reynosa, a border city plagued by drug violence. He scraped by as a security guard for a maquiladora, earning less than $1 an hour and lived in a small concrete house in one of Reynosa's poorest neighborhoods.