What began as a protest over missing teachers, overcrowded classrooms and deteriorating schools has grown into something much harder to define — with thousands of arrests, serious violence, accusations of police brutality, Palestinian flags, partisan intervention and now a diplomatic confrontation with Iran. PARIS — The demands that started France’s latest protest movement were remarkably …
Can Texas turn off free speech on its public college campuses at 10p.m.? Three federal appeals judges in New Orleans started answering that question Tuesday morning. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard argument in Fellowship of Christian University Students at UT Dallas v. Eltife, the challenge to Senate Bill 2972, the …
President Donald Trump says every adult American citizen could receive a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” if Republicans keep control of Congress. The proposal would cost roughly $1.2 trillion — and several important details remain unanswered. Five thousand dollars. For every adult American citizen. That is the promise President Donald Trump has attached to this year’s midterm …
Council backed away from requiring a conditional-use permit for every future data center while officials continue addressing a short-term rental program with an 8% compliance rate. KILLEEN — Less than three weeks after directing city staff to require special approval for every future data center, the Killeen City Council appears to be changing course. The …
What a day spent seeing Belton from the sidewalk, the lake and the air taught me about understanding a community You can live in a place for years and still know most of it from about five feet off the ground. We experience our cities through windshields. We know the road to work, the storefront …
The governor ordered Texas environmental regulators to stop approving data center permits until state officials finish reviewing the industry’s demands on the electric grid, water supplies and local communities. AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Greg Abbott ordered Texas environmental regulators Monday to halt permitting for data center projects, significantly expanding a state crackdown on the rapidly …
The First Amendment does not give journalists an unrestricted right to enter the White House. But once government creates press facilities, decades of precedent limit how it can decide who gets through the door. President Donald Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House because he does not like their reporting. Surely …
Thirty-three years after Milton Friedman made the case, it is time to run the experiment again. In 1993, Milton Friedman published an essay with a deliberately provocative title: Why Government Is the Problem. He began with two tasks. The easy one was to show the ways government had contributed to some of the country’s largest …
AI executives may sincerely fear catastrophic risk. They also lead companies that could benefit enormously from regulations smaller competitors cannot afford. Both things can be true. The warning sounds like science fiction. Artificial-intelligence agents become capable enough to find vulnerabilities, coordinate with one another, evade safeguards and eventually compromise large portions of the internet. Then …
Twenty-five years after September 11, America remembers the day we were attacked. We should also remember the brief moment afterward when we remembered that we belonged to one another. There are days that divide history into before and after. September 11, 2001, was one of them. Before that morning, the Twin Towers still stood over …
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There’s a silence after the call ends, after the scoreboard freezes, after the last box is checked. It doesn’t say, “You’ll bounce back.” It doesn’t whisper, “You’ll rise stronger.” It just says, “It’s over.” Every medic knows that silence. The failed resuscitation where the machines stop but the family doesn’t. Every athlete knows it too; …
When Does Disagreement Become Intimidation? After another contentious Temple City Council meeting, violent language and deeply personal messages aimed at local officials offer a small glimpse of a national problem: political anger is increasingly escaping the boundaries that make democratic disagreement possible. There is an answer in a democracy when you believe your mayor is …
After months of protests, accusations and a failed recall effort, Temple Mayor Tim Davis delivered an unusually personal defense of the city’s data-center strategy — and of the public servants making the decision. For months, Temple Mayor Tim Davis has defended the city’s embrace of data centers with numbers. Taxable value. Infrastructure agreements. Water use. …
The five-star prodigy who couldn’t save Billy Napier’s job in Gainesville comes home to Waco, where a Heisman-caliber ceiling meets a coach on the hottest seat in the country. The Homecoming Nobody Saw Coming When DJ Lagway entered the transfer portal in mid-December, he was not on Baylor’s board. The Bears had a long list …
A meditation on restraint, mastery, and the art of living deliberately There’s a sound to discipline. It’s the rasp of a blade being sharpened before dawn. The soft creak of boots laced in the dark before a shift. The breath before a monk strikes the gong. It’s quiet, deliberate, and often unseen. We used to …
Central Texas lost one of its great servants this week, and I lost one of mine. Mrs. Jean Shine, Civilian Aide Emeritus to the Secretary of the Army and one of the most respected real estate leaders Central Texas has ever produced, passed away on Sunday at the age of 79. For those who knew …
Temple Stands Together demanded answers from City Hall. Its own campaign-finance records now leave a different set of questions unanswered. Temple Stands Together was founded on a simple premise: local government should be watched. Its Texas nonprofit filing describes the organization as a political watchdog dedicated to citizen education, lobbying, legal action and, when necessary, …
A meditation on gratitude, progress, and the paradox of plenty A hundred years ago, kings died from infections we treat with a pill. Queens froze in castles we now heat with a button. And peasants carried water we complain comes out too slow. We live like royalty once dreamed — longer lives, warmer homes, fuller …
Lindsay Clancy’s murder trial has focused attention on the medications she received before killing her three children. But the more important question may be what her treatment reveals about a mental-health system trying to manage a deteriorating patient one prescription at a time. By the time Lindsay Clancy sat down with her psychiatrist on Jan. …
Every other winter the UIL redraws its map, and the 2026-2027 edition landed hard on Bell County. Four county programs share a single 6A district now. Killeen and Shoemaker dropped to 5A. Four schools will run out a new head coach this fall. The lines may have moved, but the rivalries didn’t. Here is the …
The milestone is mostly symbolic. The cost of carrying that debt and the fact that Washington continues adding to it during relatively normal economic conditions is not. The United States now owes more than $40 trillion. Yes, that’s 40 trillion dollars — $40,000,000,000,000. Spend a dollar every second and you would need more than 1.2 …
A meditation for the agnostic, the believer, and everyone in between Governments rise and fall, systems fail, leaders disappoint. But faith, hope, and love — whether you believe in eternity or only in today — are the virtues that outlast politics. They are the reason we bother with politics at all. Faith Faith gets a …
Minnesota says Gov. Greg Abbott is violating the Constitution by withholding the extradition of an ICE agent charged with assault. Abbott first raised a legal objection. Then he attached an unrelated political demand. Interstate extradition is not normally exciting. One state charges someone with a crime. The accused is found in another state. The governor …
Automated license plate readers were sold as tools for finding stolen cars and wanted suspects. As those cameras become part of nationwide, AI-searchable networks, the harder question is what government should be allowed to learn from the millions of vehicles they photograph. For years, the debate over automated license plate readers could be reduced to …
A fake polling firm slipped fabricated numbers into American elections and called it a “social experiment.” The more troubling question is how voters are supposed to know which polls are real and what pollsters and journalists owe the public before asking them to believe one. A poll can be wrong, sometimes spectacularly wrong. That is …
What the USS Abraham Lincoln Is Telling Us About War, Endurance and Secrecy My first reaction was not particularly sympathetic. Nine months? That was the crisis? I spent enough time in the Army to have an admittedly distorted sense of what constitutes comfortable military living. Given the choice between sleeping in a fighting position and …
Temple ISD and Belton ISD sit barely ten miles apart, but their students, histories, and civic identities tell very different stories about public education in Bell County. Backpacks are packed, alarm clocks are going off earlier, parents are taking the obligatory first-day pictures, and across Temple and Belton, thousands of students are returning to classrooms. …
Texas Senate Bill 1 is back in force after another Fifth Circuit ruling. But the most important part of the decision may not be what it says about mail ballots or voter assistance. It is what it says about who gets through the courthouse door. Texas won another major round in the long legal fight …
A Thought Experiment on Truth, Silence, and Moral Responsibility Abstract This thought experiment examines the ethical dilemma of whether to disclose a painful truth that has ceased to serve a functional purpose, even when the harm has passed, the parties have moved on, and peace appears to have been restored. It centers on the moral …
Iceberg lettuce from central Mexico has been linked to one major cluster in an extraordinary summer surge of cyclosporiasis. The parasite is difficult to detect, difficult to wash away and slow to trace. At the same time, parts of the federal surveillance system designed to spot foodborne disease have been scaled back. Most foodborne outbreaks …
Adriane Hodges says she never promised to work for free. Bell County commissioners say state law requires candidates who campaign to abolish their own office to decline compensation. Behind the potential lawsuit is a simpler political question: if the office is unnecessary, what should taxpayers pay its final occupant? Adriane Hodges ran for Bell County …
The Democratic Socialists of America have not captured the Democratic Party. Neither had the Tea Party when it began challenging incumbents, disciplining Republican leaders and teaching an entire party to fear its own primaries. The most common comparison in American politics is also one of the least useful. Democratic Socialists are described as the left’s …
After the Supreme Court invalidated tariffs imposed under emergency powers, the federal government began returning billions of dollars to importers. But many companies had already passed at least part of the original cost to American businesses and shoppers. American consumers were repeatedly told that tariffs would make foreign countries pay. That was never how tariffs …
One case challenges the state’s authority to classify manufactured cannabinoids such as Delta-8 as controlled substances. Another argues Texas health agencies effectively rewrote the state’s hemp law through new testing standards and licensing fees. Texas’ latest crackdown on intoxicating hemp has moved from rulemaking into two separate court fights. The cases challenge different parts of …
You want to know what happiness is? I’ll tell you what it’s not. It’s not a commercial with a couple on a beach holding hands while a stock piano track swells in the background. It’s not a Hallmark card, or a hashtag, or the airbrushed smile in a pharmaceutical ad promising that relief comes in …
Sen. Charles Schwertner says testimony about inadequate notice, shortened timelines and due-process concerns shows that Texas’ transmission approval process must be overhauled before the projects advance. His request appears to include the proposed Bell County East–Big Hill line, although his statement did not identify individual docket numbers. A senior Texas senator is calling on state …
Texas law already prevents religious rules from overriding the Constitution, state statutes or the rights of people who never agreed to follow them. The staying power of the issue comes from something larger: “Sharia” has become shorthand for fears about immigration, Islam, cultural change and who belongs. Texas politicians regularly warn that Sharia law must …
James Talarico’s polling strength does not necessarily mean Texas has turned blue. It may mean a meaningful number of independents, moderates and normally Republican voters are treating Ken Paxton differently from the rest of the GOP ticket. Texas has spent nearly four decades denying Democrats a statewide victory. That history is why any poll showing …
A second Texas NHL franchise could bring excitement, rivalry and civic pride. None of that means Austin or Houston residents should be asked to finance a billionaire’s arena. Texas may soon get a second National Hockey League team; that would be exciting. A franchise in Austin or Houston could create a new statewide rivalry with …
The NHL has begun evaluating a 33rd franchise in Texas, with the Friedkin family considering Austin and Houston. Houston offers scale and corporate strength. Austin offers rapid growth and an underserved major-league market. Neither city currently has the arena the league says it needs. Texas may soon have two National Hockey League teams. The NHL …
Texas isn’t just building a transmission line. It’s deciding how to power its next economic chapter. For many Central Texas landowners, the Bell County East–Big Hill transmission project is about one thing: protecting their property. For ERCOT planners and utility companies, it’s about something entirely different: making sure the Texas electric grid can support the …
The Fifth Amendment is not evidence of guilt. But Anthony Fauci accepted a sweeping federal pardon covering his pandemic-era service, then refused to answer every question senators asked—including the day of the week and the color of his tie. If prosecution remained possible, what offense was outside the pardon? Sen. Josh Hawley started with a …
Temple voters approved $158 million for science, technology, health sciences and workforce facilities. The election settled whether the projects could proceed, but not whether one local taxing district should continue financing infrastructure for a much larger regional mission. TEMPLE — Temple voters made their decision in May: Temple College could move forward with the second …
Texas reimbursed Bell County governments for roughly 12 cents of every dollar requested after granting a statewide disabled-veteran exemption. As Gov. Greg Abbott proposes eliminating school property taxes for homeowners, the county offers a warning: a tax can be economically efficient, ethically troubling and politically popular to eliminate—all at the same time. Property-tax relief may …
Democracy doesn’t break in silence. It erodes, one argument at a time, until listening is replaced with shouting, and shouting with cheering. And when it finally collapses, it won’t be mourned with grief—it’ll be celebrated with thunderous applause, mistaking the sound of the fall for the sound of a victory. These aren’t speeches. They aren’t …
Federal officials privately debated COVID-19’s origin and fatality rate while credentialed dissenters were publicly discredited and government officials pressed social-media companies to restrict pandemic claims. Anthony Fauci’s Senate testimony should establish who decided when an unresolved question became “misinformation.” WASHINGTON — More than 1,000 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s private pandemic-era journals reveal federal scientists …
From community centers in Killeen to weekly meal boxes in Holland, local school districts adapted their summer nutrition programs to reach children where they already were. For thousands of Bell County children, the final school bell does more than mark the beginning of summer vacation. It can also mean the loss of the breakfasts and …
The Belhouse pipeline isn’t about moving water. It’s about changing how an entire region thinks about water security. For generations, most communities thought about water as something local. Belton had Lake Belton. Killeen had Stillhouse Hollow. Georgetown had Lake Georgetown. Each city largely relied on the lakes and water rights closest to home. That model …
BANGOR, Maine — Maine Democrats selected former state Senate President Troy Jackson on Saturday as their replacement nominee to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins, completing an emergency nomination process triggered by the withdrawal of Democratic primary winner Graham Platner. Jackson received 566 of the 571 votes cast at the party’s nominating convention in Bangor. Saundra …
TEMPLE, Texas — A citizen petition seeking to amend the City of Temple Charter and lower the signature requirement for recalling elected officials will not move forward after organizers did not submit the petition to the City before the filing deadline, according to the Temple City Secretary’s Office. The proposed amendment would have significantly reduced …
Every major political controversy eventually stops being about the issue that started it. The Boston Tea Party was never simply about tea. It became a debate over representation and the limits of governmental power. Brown v. Board of Education was never simply about classrooms. It became a defining question about equal protection under the law …
They grow more slowly than fingernails move across a human lifetime. They shelter animals we have barely begun to name. They contain metals needed for batteries, power grids, weapons and smartphones. And, for a brief moment, they appeared capable of producing oxygen in complete darkness. Imagine a plain so deep beneath the Pacific Ocean that …
Beginning July 31, the legal status of a cannabinoid product may depend on its chemistry—not where it was purchased, how it was labeled, or whether it was legal when the customer bought it. For years, Texans could walk into a convenience store, smoke shop, liquor store, or specialty retailer and purchase products labeled Delta-8, Delta-10, …
For more than a century, America has repeatedly learned the same lesson: prohibiting a popular intoxicant does not eliminate demand. It moves that demand into an illegal market, strips away quality controls, empowers criminal suppliers, and forces law enforcement to spend enormous resources policing private behavior. Alcohol prohibition did not create a sober America. It …
TEMPLE, TX — Having failed to successfully recall Temple’s leadership over a county-approved data center, the organizers of “Temple Stands Together” have decided on a new strategy: if you cannot win the game, change the rules. The group is currently circulating a second round of petitions aimed at rewriting the Temple City Charter. They are …
Every city charter reflects a series of decisions about one fundamental question: How should a community balance voter accountability with governmental stability? That question has returned to Temple following the unsuccessful effort to recall members of the Temple City Council over the approval of Rowan Digital Infrastructure data centers. Rather than pursuing another recall petition, …
SALADO, TX — If there is one thing more predictable than a Central Texas summer, it is the profound legal illiteracy of a local community Facebook group. This week, the digital town square of Salado erupted over the proposed Southern Oaks development. The viral outrage—spearheaded by posts screaming, “ONLY IN SALADO”—paints a picture of a …
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In politics, the length of an official excuse is directly proportional to the magnitude of the failure. On Wednesday, the national…
TEMPLE, TX — If you are still clinging to the mid-century romance of local constituent service, institutional incumbency, or ideological independence, the…
TEMPLE, TX — It turns out that screaming into a microphone in a municipal gymnasium does not actually alter the mathematical realities of the Texas Election…
TEMPLE, TX — It began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer for civic unity. It ended with warnings of government mind-control frequencies and the promise…
AUSTIN, TX — For over two decades, Senator John Cornyn has served as the steady, immovable center of gravity in Texas Republican politics. He is a creature of…
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KILLEEN, TX — If you want to understand how power redistributes itself after a municipal realignment, don’t look at the smiles during the ceremonial…
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the grey dawn of this Friday, the machinery of modern slaughter has been ordered to a halt. President Donald Trump, acting as the primary…
If you attended the recent city council meeting in Temple, you might have walked away thinking the apocalypse was breaking ground in Central Texas. Between the…
KILLEEN, TX — In the hallowed, often stifling halls of the Killeen Independent School District’s central office, a decision was reached this spring that has…
TEMPLE, TX — There is a particular brand of civic fever that takes hold when the modern world attempts to plant its flag in the soil of tradition. In Temple…
AUSTIN, TX — As the mercury climbs and the Leon River begins its annual retreat into the mud, the citizens of Bell County find themselves engaged in the usual…
WASHINGTON, D.C. — For forty years, the American bureaucracy operated on a simple, if flawed, principle: when the law was silent, the "experts" spoke. Under…
WASHINGTON, D.C. — There is a law of history, often attributed to the 18th-century philosopher Adam Ferguson, which states that any great power that spends…
