State of Texas: Abbott presses Democrats to back limits on bail for accused criminals
AUSTIN (Nexstar) – Governor Greg Abbott made bail reform one of his top priorities this legislative session. But the proposals he’s backing appear to be falling short of the support needed to pass the Texas House.
In February, the Texas Senate passed out State Sen. Joan Huffman’s, R-Houston, bail reform package, including two proposed constitutional amendments. Constitutional amendments require a two-thirds vote from each chamber of the Texas legislature before needing a simple majority in a public vote.
Gov. Abbott needs to convince at least 12 House Democrats to join all the House Republicans to pass the proposed amendments. On Wednesday, Abbott hinted he still needs those votes.
“There’s progress, but not sufficient progress,” Abbott said at a news conference. Sen. Huffman and House Criminal Jurisprudence Chair John Smithee, R-Amarillo, sat beside the Governor as he spoke.
When asked about the potential of going to special session over bail reform, Abbott did not reject the possiblity.
“We’ll make decisions like that as they arise. My expectation is that no Democrat, no Republican, wants to have on their record that they supported dangerous criminals over the safety of their own constituents,” Abbott said.
House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, echoed the Governor’s position, stressing the importance of encouraging Democrats to support the legislation.
“One of the things that, you know, people need to always remember is working across the aisle is good, especially when you can find common ground. But it’s also necessary,” Burrows said in an interview for KAMC Talking Points.
“We’re going to continue to work this session and make sure that violent criminals don’t get out to do more violent crimes. I’m very hopeful that we can find some common ground and work towards bringing a solution for all Texans,” Burrows added.
Senate Joint Resolution 1 would require jails to hold those charged with felonies without bond if they’re in the country illegally. Senate Joint Resolution 5 would give judges discretion to hold those accused of certain violent and sexual felonies without bond. However, Abbott appears to want SJR 5 to go further.
“We need to amend the [Texas] Constitution to do several things,” Abbott said. “One, judges must automatically deny bail for violent crime. Crime like murder, rape and human trafficking — unless there is clear and convincing evidence that the defendant will appear in court and not endanger the community. What this does [is] it changes the law to shift the burden for repeat violent criminals to prove that they are not a danger to the community.”
Abbott acknowledged that most Democratic lawmakers have yet to see the updated version.
“I don’t know how many Democrats have actually seen that yet, so they have not been put to the test,” Abbott said. “They will be put to the test, though, here in a week or two.”
Both SJR 1 and SJR 5 had identical versions heard in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in March. They’ve been sitting there ever since.
“We’ve got to get it this week out of committee,” House Criminal Jurisprudence Chair Smithee said. “Hopefully it will be on the floor within a week or so.”
As of Friday evening, neither resolution had advanced out of committee.
If the measures get to a floor vote, the 88 House Republicans will not be able to pass them without at least 12 Democrats jumping on board. However, Abbott said this as an issue Democrats should want to support.
“It’s a common sense issue, fixing the deadly and broken bail system that lets dangerous criminals right back onto our streets,” he said. “This is and should not be a Republican or a Democrat issue. This is a public safety issue, plain and simple.”
Huffman took a stronger stance and said she’s done enough negotiating.
“[House Democrats] constituents are being raped, murdered, threatened, terrorized [and] they should have a moral obligation to take this vote and to pass this on, so the Texas voters can make a decision,” she said.
Advocates worry ‘unclear process’ in school choice law could lead to increased burden, lawsuits
Days before Gov. Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law, clearing the way for students with disabilities to receive up to $30,000 in taxpayer funds annually for private schooling, Texas school districts were already reportedly getting requests for special education evaluations — some with intentions of using the determination for the new Education Savings Account program. The state’s ESA program is expected to launch in the 2026-27 school year.
“We have already received several requests, specifically from parents who currently private school or homeschool their children,” Texas Council of Administrators of Special Education (TCASE) Region 13 Delegate Cassandra Hulsey said. “And I know a lot of other directors in this area have received those requests as well.”
Officials with the Austin Independent School District told KXAN they do not collect information to determine if requests are related to a parent’s intention to access ESA funds. Still, district officials said there had been an uptick in requests during the 2024-25 school year for evaluations from families who attend private school or are homeschooled compared to the last two school years.
Austin ISD’s special education department has been under state conservatorship since September 2023 after a Texas Education Agency investigation found the district had, for years, not been able to meet deadlines for evaluating students suspected of having a disability.
The requests come as the House school funding bill that promises relief for underfunded special education programs still has not gone before the Senate K-16 Education committee for a hearing, and as districts are dealing with a statewide and nationwide shortage of school psychologists, speech language therapists and educational diagnosticians to conduct evaluations.
“The concern is with this increase in referrals or parent requests for evaluations, districts are going to have a difficult time meeting the demand of those evaluations that they have a specific number of school days to complete,” Hulsey said.
Federal and state law already requires school districts to evaluate students suspected of having a disability within 45 school days of receiving parental consent, including children who are not enrolled in the public school district.
However, federal and state law allow for several extensions depending on the situation.
Education advocates have warned lawmakers that S.B. 2 seems to expedite the evaluation process for students seeking an ESA, removing many deadline extensions districts utilize for other students waiting to learn whether they qualify for special education services.
“The ESA legislation that is being considered basically allows private school students to cut the line. They could then become eligible for the larger ESA benefit for students with disabilities,” Disability Rights Texas Senior Policy Specialist Steven Aleman said.
Current law also allows school districts to refuse an evaluation if the student is not suspected of having a disability. In those cases, the district would have to give parents written notice of its refusal to evaluate, including an explanation of why and the information used to make the decision.
“Those thresholds seem not to exist anymore. Which means any evaluation request the district receives, we would be obligated to conduct,” Hulsey said. “Right now, there is a lot of confusion and questions.”
Despite concerns, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, recently told KXAN’s State of Texas host Josh Hinkle the bill makes no changes to how evaluations are conducted.
“Those evaluations, they are required by federal law, and there’s nothing that changes that in this bill; they’ll continue to be available,” Creighton said. KXAN reached out to his office with additional questions and will update this story when we receive a response.
TCASE officials warned in a statement that school districts would see increased litigation, “as parents disagree with school districts’ decisions under the unclear processes in SB 2.”
“The legislation imposes a burden on public schools to do work for a private school student they are not ever going to see, they are not ever going to get reimbursed for, over and above the public-school students who are already there needing services, already on waitlists,” Aleman said.
Rep. Brad Buckley’s school finance plan, House Bill 2, would give school districts $1,000 or more for every child evaluated for a suspected disability. The legislation was referred to the Senate Education K-16 committee on April 23 and has gone nearly two weeks without a hearing.
“We are a bit concerned that the original proposal to help fund some of those special education services, in particular, will be compromised by the time the bill makes it through the Senate and final approval,” Hulsey said.
Sen. Creighton, the Senate Education K-16 Chair, said on Saturday that he is working on a bill that combines H.B. 2 and the Senate’s school finance plan.
“The Senate poured historic dollars into specific funding requests from our superintendents, our teachers, our parents, our public-school advocates; the House poured more money into the basic allotment. The dollars are very similar, but the approach is a little bit different,” Creighton told KXAN during Gov. Abbott’s event where he signed the Education Savings Account program into law.
Geothermal expansion in Texas a potential ‘game changer’
Moving to Austin’s Whisper Valley neighborhood in East Travis County checked off two firsts for Andrea and Phillip Melendrez: they bought their first home, and they experienced their first house with geothermal energy.
“I actually had no idea what it was,” said Andrea, sitting inside their kitchen. “It was advertised, and I had to go on and Google it.”
The couple’s home, in the development that bills itself as a “planned community of the future,” uses a geothermal heat pump system. It pipes liquid 350 feet underground, using the temperature of the earth to efficiently cool the house in the summer and heat it in winter.
“It cools down a lot quicker,” Andrea noted about her geothermal-powered AC.
Geothermal is an age-old renewable energy source that now, thanks to modern technology, could see widespread proliferation in Texas, and at a much larger scale than the Melendrez’s household system.
Geothermal experts in Texas are pushing to tap this energy like never before in the United States, with power plants capable of energizing thousands of homes, data centers and military bases. These plants use pipes drilled deep into the Earth, using that heat to produce energy.
In terms of power production, geothermal accounted for 0.4% of the country’s utility-scale energy supply in 2023. Similarly, it barely has a toehold in Texas’ grid. But that could soon change. In a rare consolidation of interests, geothermal has the backing of the state and federal government’s top leadership, both sides of the political aisle, the oil and gas industry and environmentalists.
A couple projects in the pipeline could prove its viability – one being constructed by the City of Austin and another federally-backed project in South Texas.
Meanwhile, at the Capitol, lawmakers are establishing a regulatory framework for geothermal to pave the way for permitting and development.
Texas is uniquely positioned to lead on geothermal for a couple reasons, said Jeremy Mazur, the director of infrastructure and natural resources policy at Texas 2036, a nonprofit, a nonpartisan public policy and research organization.
“First, we actually have the formations underneath our soil that can provide geothermal energy,” he told KXAN. Second, “we have this strong, robust oil and gas industry that has the drilling technology that we need in order to develop geothermal energy resources.”
Mazur acknowledged geothermal is facing hardly any headwind, unlike some other renewable energy sources in the state.
Alignment of interests
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency regarding energy production. The U.S. needs “reliable, diversified and affordable” domestically produced power, according to the declaration that defines those preferred sources of homegrown energy as oil and gas, petroleum, uranium, flowing water, critical minerals and geothermal.
Absent from the list are solar and wind power, which provide a significant percentage of Texas’ power, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT.
Three months later, Trump signed an executive order for “protecting American energy from state overreach” seeking to stop state-imposed limits on certain energy production, including geothermal. Then, on Earth Day, Trump singled out geothermal as a way to lead “in both energy production and environmental innovation.”
Federal support extends into the U.S. Department of Energy. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, a former fracking executive, notes on his government webpage his interest in applying shale drilling methods toward “next-generation geothermal.” During his confirmation hearing in January, he called it a “tremendous potential energy source.”
Part of the animus toward wind and solar relates to the substantial amount of land used for those above-ground renewables and the potential environmental impact of installing large solar and wind farms, Mazur said. Mazur’s organization, Texas 2036, supports an all-of-the-above energy production approach in Texas, including wind and solar, to meet Texas’ skyrocketing demand.
KXAN has reported extensively on the battle over state regulation of wind and solar power at the Capitol. Wind and solar energy advocates argue Texas needs every bit of energy it can get, with the state’s energy demand expected to roughly double in the next five years, according to ERCOT.
Renewable energy experts told KXAN the industry provides ample, low-cost power that helps stabilize Texas’ grid and enrich property owners, school districts and local governments in rural Texas.
One selling point for geothermal is its firm, or “on-demand,” power source, according to Jade Gillespie, the executive director of the Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance. That means geothermal is constantly available, regardless of atmospheric conditions. Wind and solar are considered intermittent because they can’t continuously produce power.
“It’s the heat beneath our feet,” she said. “It’s the magma that powers the core of the Earth and so it’s always there. It just depends on: How do we get to it?”
As a trade organization, Gillespie and the Alliance promote geothermal energy and lobby for beneficial legislation at the Capitol. Laws passed in 2023 placed regulation of geothermal under the Texas Railroad Commission, she said. The RRC regulates oil and gas production, not railroads.
Geothermal at the Capitol
Gillespie’s organization is working on bills this year that would define what a geo-pressure battery storage system is and also potentially provide Chapter 313 tax abatements, she said. Those abatements limit the taxable value of property for school property taxes, according to the Comptroller’s Office.
Mazur said he’s watching House Bill 3240, a measure by State Rep. Bobby Guerra, D-Mission. Guerra’s bill would establish a “Texas Geothermal Energy Production Policy Council to study this issue and provide pertinent policy recommendations,” according to a House analysis.
If passed, the Geothermal Council would be placed under the Railroad Commission of Texas. It would be led by the Railroad Commissioner and the director of Bureau of Economic Geology at UT Austin – or their designees. There would be up to 11 members appointed by the RRC to represent different interests, including up to five from the geothermal energy industry, according to an analysis of the bill.
It also tasks the council with studying how tax breaks could encourage future geothermal energy projects along with developing recommendations for the oversight and regulation of production, pipeline transportation and energy storage.
“It’s about moving Texas forward. It’s about moving the United States forward in energy production that, quite frankly, doesn’t have a lot of pollution to it,” Guerra told the House Energy Resources Committee at a March 31 hearing on his bill.
“Geothermal energy is clean, renewable and available independent of the weather conditions,” he told his colleagues.
One of the state’s largest environmental protection organizations also spoke in favor of the bill at the hearing.
“Geothermal is a really important resource. It could be very important to the state. It’s a renewable resource that is also dispatchable, so kind of best of both worlds,” said Cyrus Reed, with the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club. “We are supportive of geothermal. It doesn’t have some of the problems that traditional fossil fuel has in terms of emissions, so that’s good.”
Breaking ground on geothermal projects
Two projects underway in Texas could help prove geothermal’s viability.
The U.S. Air Force awarded a $1.9 million grant to Houston-based Sage Geosystems to develop and test a geothermal plant capable of generating enough energy for one of its bases. The plant’s “geopressured geothermal system” uses “cutting-edge fracking technology to extract thermal energy from miles below the Earth’s surface,” according to the Air Force. If successful, Sage could build a full-scale plant at Ellington Field Joint Air Reserve Base in Houston.
Meanwhile, the City of Austin is moving forward with its own plant. Austin is partnering with Exceed Energy Inc. to build a “first-of-its-kind” geothermal facility near Nacogdoches in East Texas that will produce 5 megawatts. That’s enough to power at least 1,250 homes, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. The city said the facility could be online as soon as this year and described geothermal as a “valuable tool” to “strengthen the grid and keep costs down.”
“With new technology and exciting opportunities to scale up energy production, the geothermal effort has the potential to change the energy landscape in Texas and create a more reliable pathway to a cleaner, greener grid,” wrote Mike Enger, Austin Energy’s Vice President for Energy Markets and Resource Planning, in an email.
Oil and gas industry at the helm of geothermal
The Texas Oil and Gas Association said its member companies are “currently exploring geothermal.”
“While this is not an area that we are currently focused on as an Association,” TXOGA President Todd Staples said in a statement, “the oil and natural gas industry welcomes the addition of abundant, reliable energy resources that help to meet our state and nation’s growing energy demands.”
A look at the companies building those geothermal plants underscores the industry’s interconnection with oil and gas.
Exceed Energy is an international drilling and well management company, according to its website. Sage Geosystems is led by Cindy Taff, a 35-year veteran of the oil and gas industry who was the vice president of Shell’s global unconventional wells operations.
“We are leveraging our decades of commercializing wells to make pressure geothermal a reality,” Sage says on its website.
Taff is also the policy committee chair of the Texas Geothermal Energy Alliance. The Alliance’s president and chairman is Barry Smitherman, the former statewide elected chief of the Texas Railroad Commission.
Texas’ oil and gas expertise puts the state at the forefront of geothermal, Mazur said.
“Since developing geothermal energy involves the same drilling and exploration technology that’s oftentimes used with oil and gas, it makes sense for this native workforce, in this native industry, to set Texas on the path of being one of the nation’s geothermal energy leaders,” he said.
That sentiment was echoed by Drew Nelson with the non-profit Project InnerSpace, who is pushing for geothermal expansion in Texas.
“You look at all of the major geothermal startups and they have former oil and gas people that are playing key roles in those companies because they have the know-how, they have the technology,” Nelson said.
“Oh, it’s bright,” he added, when asked about the future of geothermal in Texas. “Or, if you pardon the pun, it’s hot.”
Given the apparent bipartisan political support – as well as endorsements from oil and gas and environmentalists – KXAN asked Gillespie, what are the drawbacks?
Gillespie acknowledged the cost per megawatt is the current downside. Given that higher cost, she said her group supports pending legislation that would change the rules for participation in the Texas Energy Fund so that geothermal facilities could access funds. The TEF provides low-interest loans and was created to bolster fossil fuel production.
“I’m not surprised that the costs are relatively high right now,” Mazur said. “But, once you start overcoming that development and deployment hump, you can probably see your costs go down over time.”
Back at Whisper Valley, two new homeowners are settling into their new life – with no plans to look back.
“I feel like it’s been a game-changer,” Andrea said.
President Trump to sign Take It Down Act to help victims of deepfake porn
Elliston Berry’s life changed just a couple of months into her high school career when a classmate decided to take photos from her social media page and generate fake pornographic images of her, known as deepfakes.
Elliston’s mom, Anna McAdams, recalls the moment her 14-year-old daughter discovered the images were circulating around social media.
“Coming to our room crying going, ‘Mom you won’t believe what’s happening,'” McAdams said. “We really watched her go into a shell, kind of go inside herself. She got off social media completely. We saw her withdraw.”
That was in October 2023. This year, sparked by the mother-daughter duo, President Donald Trump said he will sign the Take It Down Act — a bill to criminalize those who publish non-consensual intimate images.
McAdams said she struggled to get help from the school and from the social media app, Snapchat, to get the images removed.
“We would go on there and just request please take these down. I’d leave my email, my phone number, and never heard back from them,” McAdams said.
Their story made its way to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s office, who authored the Take It Down Act. According to the senator, more than 90% of the victims in these cases are women.
“We are seeing a growing problem of non-consensual, intimate images, kids being targeted, women being targeted,” Sen. Cruz said.
“With the advent of artificial intelligence, AI, we’re now seeing more and more deep fakes, real people that have fake either images or videos that appear to be explicit images or videos, and they’re fakes, but you can’t tell they’re fake,” Cruz added.
Cruz said he had to intervene with Snapchat to get Elliston’s fake images removed from the app, and his bill looks to make it easier for victims to get the intimate images taken down in the future.
“It shouldn’t take a sitting-U.S. Senator making a phone call to get that content down, and now as soon as the President signs the Take It Down Act into law, any victim will have a federal statutory right to ensure that content gets taken down,” Cruz said.
The senator explained his bill borrows the notice-and-takedown system from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. For example, social media companies have teams responsible for taking down content that is copyright infringement.
Cruz’s bill would require tech companies to take down any non-consensual images within 48 hours of receiving a complaint from a victim. “If this is a non-consensual intimate image, either a real one, or a deepfake, it doesn’t matter, the victim has a right to get that content taken down,” Cruz said. It not only applies to AI-generated images, but any image that is intimate in nature and does not have the consent of the person depicted.
The Federal Trade Commission will have the authority to punish and force a tech platform to comply with the law.
McAdams and her daughter continue to advocate for victims. McAdams said she is currently working on a curriculum to teach schools and parents about the bill and how they can use in it in the future.
“This Take It Down Act is there and we can use. Law enforcement can use it,” McAdams said.
