Central Texas top stories for February 6, 2025. Texas senate passes bill creating school voucher-like program, it’s not the turn of the House to vote on it. Leaner ISD announced staff cuts for next school year. Two out of three teachers providing an arts education in Texas don’t have a fine arts certification. Austin is planning to expand its sobering center to help people with alcoholism or substance-abuse. Flag football is coming to the Austin area.
Legislature
Central Texas top stories for February 4, 2025: Texas Senate to begin debate on school vouchers.
Central Texas top stories for February 4, 2025. The Texas Senate is set to begin the debate on school vouchers today. Texas Governor Greg Abbott is calling for a “Texas-sized investment” to secure the state’s water supply. Here’s how tariffs could impact your economy. We hit record high temperatures yesterday.
KUT Morning Newscast for January 13, 2025
Central Texas top stories for January 13, 2025. Advocates hope Texas lawmakers will help launch a federal food assistance program this summer. Austin unveils how a light-rail could change the city; a new report is out. Three Texas Longhorn football players announced they are heading to the National Football League draft in April.
Migrants’ arrival at Eagle Pass underscores Biden’s challenge on immigration
An emergency is declared in Eagle Pass as more than 6,000 migrants entered the small town in less than two days, and the Biden administration sends active duty troops to the southern border. Gaige Davila of Texas Public Radio with the latest.
With open acrimony between the Texas House and Senate, what’s likely to get done in the next special legislative session?
There’s less competition for homebuyers, but that doesn’t mean it’s getting easier to buy a home. We’ll hear the latest.
A new exhibit celebrates the “Big Bang of Texas music” 50 years after the seminal album “¡Viva Terlingua!”
Also: The week in politics with the Texas Tribune.
KUT Morning Newscast for January 2, 2023
Central Texas top stories for January 2, 2023. Legislature Books. I-35 Cap Plans. Crockett Gardens Falls Collapse. Vista Ridge High School Band in Rose Parade. New Years Closures.
Looming freeze has Texans eyeing power grid
Oh the weather outside is gonna get frightful, how low could temperatures go? And what should Texans do now to be prepared? All of the state expected to be affected by plummeting temperatures. We’ll check in with the Dallas Fort Worth office of the national weather service for the latest. Also a standoff between the U.S. and Mexico over corn. Most of Mexico’s corn comes from the U.S., but Mexico’s president is considering a ban, one that could have major ripple effects for both countries. Also, the latest on a newspaper strike in Fort Worth. And Michael Marks with the story of one very expensive Longhorn. All that and then some today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: March 24, 2021
The number of foster kids sleeping in state offices reaches an all time high. A long running crisis in the foster care system, now worse than ever? We’ll explore. Other stories we’re following: a surprise move in south Texas by a democratic congressman, one some see foreshadowing a national fight for control of the U.S. House. Abby Livingston of the Texas Tribune with details. And a Covid variant found in a dog and a cat in Texas. Why this news has researchers watching closely. Plus addressing racial inequity in vaccine distribution. And what an author and scholar describes as a Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics. All that and more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: January 11, 2021
From pandemic to political upheaval, a budget shortfall and beyond, what promises to be a Texas legislative session like few in recent memory. We’ll have more on tomorrow’s start of the Lone Star legislative session. Also, after the storming of the U.S. Capitol, the role of Texas’ junior senator under growing scrutiny amid calls for his resignation. And a new strain of the COVID virus found in Texas, what it means for doctors and for Texans at large. And did air pollution make Hurricane Harvey worse than it would have been otherwise? New findings from Texas based researchers. All of those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:
Texas Standard: May 28, 2019
The 86th session of the Texas legislature is history, but is it one for the history books? We’ll take a look at the highs and lows, the winners and losers and more on a special edition of the Texas Standard. At a time of bitterness and division in national politics, a funny thing happened on the way to the Texas legislature in January: the three most powerful figures in Texas politics resolved to get things done without playing to the political extremes. From property tax and school finance reform, mental health care and beyond…we’ll look at who won who lost and how it affects all of us on our special edition of the Standard:
The Lege Is Back
Texas lawmakers have reconvened at the State Capitol Building for the start of the 86th Legislative Session. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
The Armadillo’s Texas Roots Reach Back To Ancient Times
Come and Gone
There’s a little more elbow room in the Texas capital city these days… with the university students gone and the legislature out of session… for now. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
Feral Hogs
Feral hogs have been causing trouble across Texas for years. That was the inspiration for this week’s poem.
Gerrymandering
A federal court ruled recently that Texas lawmakers were intentionally discriminatory when it came to drawing congressional maps. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
Capital Bar Conversations
Work at the Texas State Capitol building can get contentious. Partisan disputes and back-hallway wheeling and dealing can leave one feeling a little exhausted at the end of the day — or whenever the lege wraps up. Sometimes what you need is a visit to the bar down the street.
KUT Weekend – December 9, 2016
REPOSTING CORRECTED AUDIO: Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miler says he should not be held responsible for posting fake news to his Facebook page. A month before the state legislative session, some of the issues facing lawmakers. At an East Austin bar, Wednesday nights signal a new rhythm for local music. Those stories and more in this edition of KUT Weekend!
Subscribe at https://weekend.kut.org
The Texas Legislature is Back in Session
Tuesday marked the beginning of the 84th Texas Legislature. Thousands of lawmakers returned to the State Capitol in Austin for the 140-day session.
Typewriter Rodeo’s Jodi Egerton wrote a special poem to welcome the legislators and a hopeful 2015.
On these warm summer nights, I see them often as I drive home on FM 803. They sometimes stop, frozen for a few seconds, their eyes reflecting my headlights in an eerie red – and then they dash off into giant clumps of prickly pear, where predators can’t follow.
The Spaniards named them armadillos – “the little armored ones.” It was a term of affection and all who have lived in this land called Texas ever since have been fond of them. To me, they are the small animal version of an armored-up Humvee. And they are truly armored. A man in east Texas shot one with a .38 caliber pistol and the bullet ricocheted off the armadillo’s thick plating and hit the man in the face. He recovered. The armadillo could not be found.
They are impressive survivors. In fact, in the land before Texas, four million years ago, their distant relatives roamed the earth. The original armadillos, called glyptodons, reached a weight of two tons, about the size of a white rhino. Plus, they had club-like spiky tails. If they were running around Texas today, we wouldn’t have roadkill, we’d have car kill. We’d call them armadigantes – armored giants. We’d need thick steel fences for them, probably electrified like those in the original Jurassic Park movie. Not sure you’d want to go home with the armadillo in such circumstances.
Speaking of Jurassic Park, scientists, perhaps inspired by a scene from that film, compared the fossil remains of ancient glyptodons, to our modern armadillos. In 2016, two geneticists analyzed the ancient DNA of a glyptodon, comparing it with that of modern armadillos and found evidence that they are directly related. Why the original was so large or why its descendants became miniaturized is an unsolved mystery.
In Texas, the nine-banded armadillo is the most common, and down in South America they have what we now call “giant armadillos.” But they’re only six feet long if you include the tail, and weigh 70 pounds. Still, if I saw one of those around here, I think I would go the other way.
At the other end of the scale is the fairy armadillo, also from South America. It is only about four inches long and pink. You could hold it in the palm of your hand. Though our Texas armadillo can’t roll into a perfect ball, like the Brazilian three-banded one, it does have this special ability: the females give birth to four identical quadruplets every time, producing as many as 16 pups in a lifetime. Bet they’re glad they don’t have to send them all to college.
The Texas armadillo – the nine-banded one – has certainly worked its way into iconic status here. There are armadillo t-shirts, tattoos galore, armadillo lamps (no armadillos hurt in the making of the lamps), armadillo campers and trailers and armadillo restaurants that don’t serve armadillo. However, during the Great Depression, an era many blamed on President Herbert Hoover, food was scarce, and many people in Texas hunted and ate armadillos, calling them “poor man’s pork” or “Hoover hogs.” Later on, people blamed leprosy in Texas on armadillo meat.
No doubt, the best-known armadillo business, open from 1970-1980, was the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin. The nightclub was named after the armadillo in order to commemorate the fact that it was located in the old National Guard Armory. Though long out of business, the Armadillo World Headquarters helped lay the foundation for the world-class live music scene that thrives in Austin today.
To properly honor all the positive influences of the armadillo’s mystique in Texas, the 1995 legislature declared the nine-banded armadillo the official State Small Mammal of Texas. The law reads in part:
WHEREAS: …The armadillo, is a hardy, pioneering creature that chose to begin migrating here at about the time that Texas became a state; and
WHEREAS: The armadillo possesses many remarkable and unique traits, some of which parallel the attributes that distinguish a true Texan, such as a deep respect and need for the land, the ability to change and adapt, and a fierce undying love for freedom; and;
WHEREAS: [The armadillo is] a proud and indomitable as the state from which it hails.
RESOLVED: That the 74th Legislature of the State of Texas hereby . . . designate(s) the armadillo as the official Small State Mammal of Texas.
The Texas Longhorn was made the Official Large State Mammal in the same legislation.
And then we also have the unofficial honoring of the little armored ones in a famous song written by Gary P. Nunn. So the Armadillo is distinguished by legislation, protected by law, and immortalized in song. Is Texas a great country or what?