Free Republic

The City Council chamber was packed Sunday, the thoughts of the community on display on the many signs dotting the crowd: "Stay Tom," "No to hate - Tom must resign," "Support Tom - no political agendas," "No to bigotry." Hundreds gathered for the special session the council called to address an anti-Islam social media post member council member Tom Harrison shared Tuesday night. The post, which included a photo of a student wearing a hijab, said: "Share if you think Trump should ban Islam in American schools." Harrison removed the post the following day and apologized online.

Texans go to the polls for primary elections on March 6, the same date is also the 182nd anniversary of the fall of the Alamo. Normally, they would not be connected but this year they are in one of the hottest primary races in Texas. Incumbent Land Commissioner George P. Bush is fighting off a blast from the past. His predecessor, Jerry Patterson, wants his job back in part because of a needed but controversial revamp of the historical site. Specifically, whether to move the cenotaph – the gravestone of the Alamo defenders...Bush and his campaign team didn’t grant us...

West Texas school district allows concealed carry on campus CLAUDE, TX (KFDA) - Claude Independent School District has several staff members that carry concealed weapons on school grounds. A sign in front of Claude ISD campuses shows that the district has multiple staff members who carry concealed weapons. Parents who have children at the school say they feel very safe and comfortable knowing their staff are armed and ready to protect them if they have to. "It makes me feel really, really safe that we have staff on hand if anything happened," said mother of a Claude ISD student...

SUGAR LAND — One thing Sen. Ted Cruz isn’t doing as he seeks a second term is running away from the president. Despite a checkered history, the Texan boasts about his access and influence on matters ranging from taxes to the Paris Climate Accord. “I spent a lot of time urging President Trump to pull out of that deal,” he recounted. “I spent 45 minutes on Air Force One saying, `Mr. President, this is killing jobs and it’s bad for our economy.'” The day after Trump announced his decision, Cruz continued, “he calls me on my cellphone. He says, 'Well,...

William Shelton will not let go of the past, even if it is in the way of someone else's future. He has spent more than five years rebuilding his family's ancestral home, board by board, and has no intention of leaving it or the 250-acre farm that has been in his family since 1851. Two years ago, surveyors started showing up, wanting a clear idea of his property lines for Texas Central Railway, the company behind plans for a 200-mph "bullet train" connecting Houston to Dallas. The proposed route would go through Shelton's farm. "I guarantee I will be restoring...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced Thursday he is willing to sit down and discuss gun control legislation with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and John Cornyn (R-TX). This is the second time in four months he has agreed to talk to about gun control proposals. On November 8, 2017, Breitbart News reported that he had agreed “to allow a Judiciary Committee hearing on bump stock gun control.” Ironically, two of the key proponents of those hearings were Feinstein and Cornyn. Additionally, Feinstein had put forth a bill to ban bump stocks altogether. Fast forward to February 2018 and CBS News reports...

A survey administered to students in seventh, ninth and 11th grades across Lake Travis Independent School District showed they feel more stressed and contemplate suicide and self-harm more than other students nationally. Lake Travis ISD administered the Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behaviors Survey to more than 1,400 students last year. Results were recently presented to the school board, pointing out that 773 of the students surveyed said they feel the stress of school is “too much.” School administrators also say 171 students said they considered committing suicide in the past year, and 80 of those 171 students had...

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Travis County Sheriff’s Office deputies do not have rifle-resistance vests because Sheriff Sally Hernandez will not commit to hold all arrested undocumented immigrants for deportation. In January, Governor Abbott announced the state would fund $23 million in grants to purchase 33,000 vests for more than 450 law enforcement departments. Every agency that applied for vests received them. Travis County did not apply for the grant because one condition from the governor’s office required the agency to “sign a letter confirming compliance with ICE detainer requests both now and during the grant term of at least one year,”...

Federal immigration agents are escalating efforts to crack down on businesses hiring undocumented workers. New data released Friday morning shows Immigration and Customs Enforcement visited 122 businesses over the past five days, mostly in Southern California. Mike Poindexter is CEO of his family business the Poindexter Nut Company near Fresno, California. He says most Americans don't want these labor-intensive jobs. "We hire people all the time. They show up, they work two days and they leave," Poindexter said. His company is now being audited by ICE. "We've had somewhere between 5 to 10 percent of our workforce quit voluntarily just...

The Houston school district is under fire after a student without legal status ended up in immigration detention following his arrest by a school police officer for an altercation with a female student. A lawyer for Dennis Rivera Sarmiento, 19, said his client was bullied by the 15-year-old girl and retaliated only after she taunted him with racial slurs, threw a full bottle of Gatorade at him and confronted him. "He's very fearful of being deported to Honduras," said Rivera's attorney, Brandon Roché. On Wednesday, students at Stephen F. Austin High School in Houston staged a lunch hour walkout to...

President Trump on Wednesday called on lawmakers to oppose a series of bipartisan efforts to address immigration and resolve the fate of the so-called “Dreamers,” demanding fealty to his hard-line approach even as more moderate senators converged on a narrower approach. Senators in both parties are racing against a self-imposed, end-of-the-week deadline to write legislation that could win broad support by increasing border security while at the same time offering a path to citizenship for immigrants brought to the United States as children. Members of a bipartisan group calling itself the Common Sense Coalition said they have reached a deal...

DALLAS - If you can’t win big, go small. That’s the strategy gaining momentum among criminal justice reformers in the age of Trump, as the federal government hardens its approach to law enforcement. Instead of pouring money and energy into squeezing change out of Washington, national civil rights organizations are teaming with local groups to push their agendas in county-level district attorney races, where a few thousand votes can determine who asserts the most influence over the local justice system. Picking their targets carefully, and crunching election data to influence pivotal voter blocs - and benefiting from the largesse of...

A reporter last night asked San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich why it’s important for the NBA to celebrate Black History Month. Popovich isn’t one to pull any punches: ‘I think it’s pretty obvious. The league is made up of a lot of black guys. To honor that and understand it is pretty simplistic. How would you ignore that? But more importantly, we live in a racist country that hasn’t figured it out yet.’

With an average hourly wage of $18.64 (with taxes accounted for) and the median price of rent at $1,194 in Austin, SmartAsset calculated it would take about 64 hours for those living in Austin to make enough to cover their housing bills. Obviously, if people make more or less or if rent is less or greater, then those numbers shift. To calculate yours, take your monthly rent and divide it by how much you make an hour, after tax and deductions. San Jose, California, is the big city with the most hours of work needed to pay off rent, with...

A group of GOP senators are preparing to introduce an immigration plan that lines up with President Trump's framework as the Senate barrels toward a heated debate over the issue. Seven GOP senators, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), will file the bill, known as the Secure and Succeed Act, on Monday. "Our proposal is supported by the President, who’s come a long way to reach a compromise. This is the only Senate proposal that has any chance of passing the House and being signed into law," Grassley said in a statement. The legislation mirrors Trump's framework by offering a...

"The parents of special needs children are especially vulnerable to state intervention."This mom's story in The Washington Post will kick anyone in the gut. Texas writer May Cobb was out for a day with her mom, her husband, and their autistic 5-year-old who, miraculously, was doing great. By great, Cobb explained, she meant he had not had a single meltdown during the hour they were at a park and on the boardwalk near Lady Bird Lake in Austin. He hadn't stripped off all his clothes, and he wasn't banging his head over and over again. Sure, his hair was messy—his...

(Congressman Henry) Cuellar said the $25 billion that the Trump administration has requested will be used to financed about 250 miles of barriers along south Texas. The new construction would be primarily between Laredo and Brownsville, his office said. DHS officials did not cite as to what the barriers would look like, Cuellar said.

The Austin Justice Coalition is asking community members to donate copies from a specific list of fiction and nonfiction titles to the Carver Branch of the library system. The city came up with the list of 126 works at the group’s request, and the donations will expand Carver’s collection. “For me, even if we get two books, it’s better than nothing,” said Ishia Lynette, AJC’s social media and community service director. She’s organizing the Black Literature Matters donation event Monday as part of the organization’s Black Unity Week. Carver already has a piece of its collection dedicated to African American...

Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert appeared on Judge Jeanine Pirro’s show on Fox News to discuss the fallout of the FISA memos, which brought to light potential abuse of government surveillance to spy on the Trump campaign. “You and I believe in due process,” Gohmert said. “We would never send somebody to jail without due process, but one thing — and this is a good segue, I think — when a lawyer provides something to the court that is not true, and especially to a FISA secret court where there is nobody there for the other side. The other said —...

An Austin mother is upset that Four Points Middle School sent her daughter home this week with an assignment to “Draw a picture of yourself as a slave…” “This is a learning tool that is not acceptable under any circumstances,” stated Tonya Jennings. The assignment is in reference to discussions of “slave life in Texas in the 1850’s”, according to a picture of the assignment sent to CBS Austin by Jennings. Upon learning of the assignment, Jennings husband went to the school Friday to discuss the issue with administrators. A Leander ISD spokesperson sent a statement to CBS Austin Saturday...