Texas hemp businesses can keep
selling their cannabis flour and
concentrate products, at least for
now. That's after a Travis County
judge blocked key parts of the
state's new hemp regulations, while
a lawsuit against those rules and
increased fees plays out.
We've got the latest updates on the
state hemp market, and there is just
one bidder for the contract to take
operational control of three Austin
ISD middle schools.
The move is being made in an effort
to avoid a state takeover.
We're gonna talk about the
significance of the sole bidder.
That's coming up on today's show.
The Austin Signal is a production
of KUT News, hosted by
Jerry Quijano.
Plus, a new memoir from an
Austin-based author is a reflection
on home, family, and her Jewish
faith.
We're gonna have that conversation
and a whole lot more.
It's all coming up next, and it's
right here on Austin Signal.
Howdy out there, you are listening
to Austin Signal.
I'm your host, Jerry Econol.
May the 4th it is.
Thank you for tuning in and starting
the week with community powered
public radio.
This is KUT News.
Well, we've seen action this month
on two separate cases regarding the
sale and legality of hemp products
here in Texas.
In one, a Travis County judge
granted a temporary injunction
that would allow Texas retailers to
continue selling smokeable hemp for
the time being.
Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court
lifted a different temporary
injunction against the Department
of State Health Services, that
move effectively clearing the way
for the department to classify the
psychoactive compound Delta-8-THC
as a controlled substance.
Confused by it all?
Well, you're not the only one out
there. Luckily, KUT's Nathan
Bernier has been following all
of these developments.
He joins us now to explain.
Welcome back to the show, Nathan.
And thanks for having me, Jerry.
Okay, first let's get clear on the
legality of hemp in the first place.
Marijuana is still and has been
illegal in Texas, so how are
retailers able to sell these
hemp products?
The short answer is
hemp and marijuana are just legal
categories for cannabis.
Texas legalized hemp in 2019 after
the federal farm bill.
So under Texas law, hemp is just
cannabis with no more than 0.3%
Delta 9 THC, which is the main
psychoactive ingredient.
Anything with more than zero point
three percent Delta 9 is classified
as marijuana.
But cannabis contains lots of other
compounds.
Two important ones for our
conversation, Jerry, are THCA
and Delta 8.
So THCA occurs
naturally in cannabis and converts
to Delta 9 when heated or smoked.
That's how Texas hemp shops have
been able to sell flour and
concentrates that are essentially
cannabis.
Delta 8 is different.
It occurs naturally only in trace
amounts, but businesses have been
manufacturing Delta 8 products by
converting hemp-derived CBD
into something mind-altering.
So both products grew out of the
2019 hemp law, but now they're
being treated differently by the
courts.
There have been a lot of
developments in the Texas hemp
market. Let's talk about these most
recent ones that happened on Friday.
First with this Travis County court
order, smokeable hemp products can
continue to be sold in Texas.
What did the judge have to say?
What were her reasons for this
injunction?
Okay, so Judge
Lytle granted a temporary injunction
that blocks key parts of the new
state hemp rules while the lawsuit
plays out.
The biggest thing she blocked,
two things really, the state's new
total Delta-9 THC calculation
and that formula counted THCA
toward the legal THC
limit.
So, effectively banning
smokable forms of hemp like flour
and concentrate.
Hemp businesses argued that
went too far,
that the agency exceeded its
authority.
And the judge also blocked,
this was a big win for the
Hemp businesses, sharply higher
licensing and registration fees.
And Judge Lytle blocked related
transport restrictions and a daily
penalty structure that treats
each day of some violations
as a separate violation.
So she really gave the plaintiffs
pretty much everything they were
asking for.
Her reasoning was that Hemp
businesses did show a probable
right to relief, which in plain
English means she found they're
likely to show that the state
exceeded its authority and violated
rulemaking procedures and
raised constitutional problems with
these fees and penalties.
And that order applies broadly
across the whole hemp industry, not
just to the plaintiffs that sued.
But it also does not block all the
new rules. There's some consumer
safety provisions that remain in
place, like age restrictions and
labeling requirements and a
requirement for child-resistance.
And packaging.
The other development came from the
Texas Supreme Court.
They lifted a temporary injunction
against the Department of State
Health Services.
Can you give us some background on
that and what this move from the
court effectively, what is it doing?
Yeah, so this was a separate case
about Delta 8 THC,
not to be confused with Delta 9.
Delta 8 is typically a little
less psychoactive, it's sometimes
referred to as diet weed for that
reason. And so back in 2021,
Department of State Health Services
said Delta 8THC in any
concentration was a Schedule 1
controlled substance.
Delta 8 businesses sued, among the
plaintiffs is Austin-based hometown
hero, and they got a
temporary injunction that allowed
Delta 8 sales to continue while that
case worked its way through the
courts. Well, on Friday, the
Texas Supreme Court reversed that
injunction.
And it said that the
DSHS commissioner does have
broad authority over the
civil schedules of these controlled
substances.
But the justices drew
a distinction here that I think is
important.
They drew a between trace
naturally occurring Delta 8
in the hemp plant and manufacture
Delta 8 products with higher Delta
8 levels. The court said the hemp
law does not clearly legalize
manufactured Delta 8 from
hemp-derived CBD.
But the justices said naturally
occurring Delta 8 in these very
trace amounts, it is lawful.
And so that's an important nuance.
Another thing to understand about
the case is the Texas Supreme Court
did say these businesses have
standing to sue and said
they did not have to, the quote is,
bet the farm.
By violating the law and risking
severe penalties before going to
court.
But the standing just means that
they can bring the lawsuit.
So that can move forward, but the
injunction protecting Delta 8
sales is gone.
And that could also apply to other
manufactured cannabinoids
like THCP, which is
very potent, among others.
On the surface, Nathan, it seems to
me that these actions are sort of
contradictory, maybe possibly even
canceling each other out.
It seems pretty indicative of the up
and down nature of the hemp market
right now in Texas.
What have you heard from hemp
businesses out there?
Where do they stand and what comes
next?
Well yeah, I mean these rulings on
the surface do seem contradictory,
but they involve different products
and different legal questions.
So the Travis County ruling is about
things and factors including THCA,
which occurs naturally in cannabis
and converts to Delta 9 when heated.
The Texas Supreme Court ruling is a
about manufactured Delta 8 products.
Some call them synthesized or
semi-synthesized Delta 8,
which are typically made by
chemically converting CBD into
a more concentrated Delta 8.
So where things stand right now...
THCA flour and concentrates
can remain on shelves because of
that Travis County injunction, which
is likely to be appealed by the
state.
Manufactured Delta-8 products are
on much shakier ground because
the Texas Supreme Court removed the
injunction that had protected those
sales.
That's KUT's Nathan Bernier.
We're gonna have a link to his
latest reporting in today's show
notes. Nathan, thank you for
explaining all of this.
Thank you so much, Jerry.
The Austin Independent School
District relinquished controls of
three failing middle schools as a
move to avoid state takeover of
the entire school district.
So what does the future look like
for these three Austin middle
schools?
Joining us now to talk more is
Acacia Coronado, education reporter
for Austin Current.
Acacia, welcome back to Austin
Signal. Thanks for having me.
So let's go back and talk a little
bit of background for those who
might not be familiar. Or why is the
Austin School District looking?
For someone to take over,
so to speak, these schools.
Yeah, so they're going to give
operational control to
Texas Council for International
Studies because the three
schools have had
four quote
unquote failing accountability
ratings under the state's
accountability rating system for
academics.
And so if they
reach a fifth failing accountability
rating, then state
law says that the education
commissioner could either close
the schools or a point of.
Appoint a board of managers to
lead the school district instead of
the elected school board.
And this process has been playing
out over the course of the school
year. When is the deadline for
the Austin School District to sort
of hand over these schools?
So they already voted
to enter
into a contract with Texas Council
for International Studies.
And then from there,
they submitted an application to
the TEA for benefits under
the SB 1882 program,
which would then pause that
accountability rating for two years
if approved as one of the benefits
and allow that vendor to
improve the academic rating of the
schools over the next to school
years. And that
partnership would begin to take
effect in the coming school
year.
Okay, so I believe a bidding for
that vendor position has opened
up and you've been reporting on that
at Austin current.
What have you found?
So in January, we requested
to know who had proposed
a bid to have
the operational control of these
schools.
We were under the impression that
that call for quality schools
had already closed in
October.
And so we submitted a request to
know, who had bid.
We were denied that request
and sent to the Texas Attorney
General for ruling because
the school district said that they
were still taking bids and
TEA let us know in a statement at
the time that it's kind of up to the
school district how and when they
take the bids to determine
who can take operational control of
a school when they're seeking this
kind of partnership.
So we waited for the attorney
general to rule on whether or
not this was releasable and
that ruling came a couple
of weeks ago. And so this
actually comes after
the school district had already
voted to give
that operational control to Texas
Council for International Studies.
Did you find that there were any
other bidders besides Texas Council
for International Studies?
According to the paperwork that we
received, there were no other
bidders to take operational control
of the three schools.
And why is that significant?
So according to education experts,
it is really difficult
to find an
outside operator that is willing to
take on a school for
academic improvement because of the
tight turnaround deadline and
the fact that they only have two
years to get
the school to a passing
accountability rating to avoid
the possibility of a takeover again.
Okay, so as you mentioned, the
school has already voted.
So once these middle schools
actually are taken over control
of, what if anything is actually
gonna change in the hallways of
those schools?
So as far as we know, the
operational control means
that they're gonna have a say on
staffing, they're going to have a
stay on the principal, they're to
have us say on the academics of the
school while the school district
still does some of the day-to-day
things like busses and food
service and things like that.
And do we know when that is going to
actually begin?
Texas Council for International
Studies is set to take the
operational control of the three
schools by next school year.
All right, we have been speaking
with Acacia Coronado.
She is the education reporter for
Austin Current, a partner with KUT
News and Austin Signal in
the coverage of the city of Austin.
Acacia, always great to talk with
you.
Thanks so much.
And thank you for spending part of
your sunny Monday here with
KUT News and with
Austin Signal.
No rain to start the week
here in the Austin area, but the
National Weather Service is giving
us some rain chances beginning late
tomorrow night into Wednesday
and all the way through Friday,
maybe even a shower on the weekend.
We'll keep you updated on the
latest right here on Austin
Signal, we'll be back after
a moment.
This is Austin's Signal, welcome
back.
When Joanne Borelowitz was
10, her father told her that they
would have to leave their home in
South Africa because Jews did
not belong.
South Africa couldn't
ever be home for them.
Borelowitz grew up anxious about the
meaning of home, and she reflects on
that anxiety in her new memoir,
Somewhere I Belong, a story of
country, family, home, Jewish
identity. These days,
Joanne is an art historian who calls
Austin home.
And she spoke with Texas standards
David Brown about her memoir.
Tell us a little bit more about your
family's eventual departure from
South Africa.
You were considerably older than
ten, but that stuck with
you.
Well, we all left separately,
actually. The first to leave was my
youngest sister, who moved to
the UK.
Let's see, I moved next.
I married and came to
California with my husband.
I'd been accepted into Stanford,
and he'd had a job offer.
And then my parents
and my youngest brother
left next.
They all went to Israel.
And the one who remained in
South Africa was the first
of my two brothers, the first born.
He was finishing his medical
training and then he also
moved to Israel.
You felt that it was necessary
to move, and I'm wondering if you
can say more about that.
From about the 1960s
onward, liberal inclined
South Africans left
South Africa.
We could see the writing on, yeah.
The writing was on the wall.
It wasn't going to get any better.
There was going to be some kind of
revolution.
There'd been overthrows of colonial
governments along to
our north in various parts
of Africa.
So.
We made plans to leave.
I mean, plans take a long time
to implement.
My father had a business,
my grandparents were still alive,
so things took a while, but
eventually, over the course of the
70s, we all left.
I wanted you to dig in a little bit
deeper about why your
father said what he did and
how, what sort of mark that left
on you and your siblings.
Well, you know, I think Jews
are kind of sensitive
to threats of imminent
danger, particularly since,
you, know, what happened in Nazi
Germany, and some Jews
didn't leave, just kind of ignored
the signs on the wall.
And my father was always someone,
he loved history, he consumed
history books, and he was
sure there was going to be a bloody
revolution.
There actually wasn't.
You know, my father had a kind of
apocalyptic bent.
He dreaded the
cataclysm.
So he was determined to get us out.
And there was a fairly large exodus
around the 70s, particularly
after the riots in
Sharpeville when police mowed
down children and
the racial tensions
in South Africa became more acute
and to deal with them, the apartheid
government clamped down even
more.
Rigorously on the racial
laws, thinking that more oppression
would kill things and in fact
of course that is not what happens.
You moved to California, as you
say, with your husband in the 1970s,
and I would imagine there would be a
considerable amount of culture
shock.
Oh yeah, for me it was enormous.
My ex-husband had lived in
California, so he
already loved it, but
I was terribly lonely.
I knew nobody, had no family,
I was pregnant.
So even my body was very
different to me.
Even driving on
the different side of the road in
a behemoth vehicle when I'd
had a little Volkswagen bug
in South Africa, everything
was like shocking.
That's a big part of your
book, Finding Home in Your Faith.
What was that process like and
how deliberate and deliberative
was it?
I'm thinking of people who may be
listening and may not be feeling at
home with any faith or
may be feeling very much
out of sync with where
they find themselves now in Texas,
for example.
Well, I grew up
in a very secular Jewish
family.
I would say that my father was
almost rabidly anti-religious,
but because everyone in
South Africa was kind of
forced into their ghetto,
there was a tremendous amount of
anti-Semitism in my hometown of
Durban, a kind of polite
anti-semitism from the Anglo
community.
So we moved mainly with
Jewish people, So we were Jewish,
but... Very, very secular.
My parents have never been
religious, but I'm not
sure if it was partly in rebellion
against my father, but I began
to be attracted to
the rich history of my people.
And the more I got into it, the more
wanted to get into it.
So it was some conflict with my
parents. My mother would ask me,
are you becoming from, which means
like ultra-orthodox, don't
wear a shaital, which you know is a
wig, to cover your hair.
And so, you
know, I sort of had that to contend
with, but there are so
many shades and so many ways of
being Jewish.
So, you now, I love my community
here.
I study Torah.
I'm actually enrolled to start
in the summer and
at the Spurs Institute to
do a master's degree in Jewish
studies. It's not that I need
another degree, but I
love to study.
And this is a subject that
is so dear to my heart.
There's a sense of place that many
of us have and for many
folks that's perfectly sufficient.
We can spend our lifetimes finding
that place that feels like
home and I think that that's
something that this book will really
bring to a lot of people is that,
you know, that ongoing search
for home and the meaning of home.
But for you a
big dimension of that it seems
is your own
personal journey into understanding
What it means to be Jewish
and I'm curious if you can say
more about about that
You know, I think all of us from,
you know, the middle of the 20th
century on through now have a
sense of alienation from the
world, which is very different
from when people felt that
the world was very ordered and
they had a place in the world and
they knew their place.
We're all deracinated,
we're all uprooted in various
ways. I mean, people lose connection
to their families and so on.
So I think everybody has
some kind of longing for home.
Now, home can be a
physical place.
I learned very early on in my
life that the place that I thought
was home, a physical was not
home. So,
the places where I have felt most
that I could breathe a huge
sigh of relief and feel connection
have been in
two synagogues that I have been a
part of.
I just feel connected back
through all the history to...
Way, way, way back when,
I feel a sense of relief,
like, yes, this is my place.
It sounds like this was cathartic
though, and I'm curious as you
think about people reading your
memoir, what are you hoping that
they...
Of course, I hope people will think
about where they're at home.
You know, one of the important
things about writing a memoir is
that you get to write your
own narrative.
You don't get to be scripted by
somebody else.
So I think some
of my fumbling towards my
truth comes through in my memoir.
I hope that people will be prompted
to reflect on their own stories
and how they might like to tell
it, even if they don't write a
memoir. But, um, just
think about their own stories in
different ways.
That was Austin-based author
Joanne Burelowitz talking with
Texas standards David Brown about
her new memoir, Somewhere I
Belong, a story of country,
family, home, and Jewish identity.
We're going to have a link to more
from that conversation in
today's show notes.
And that is it for us today on
Austin Signal.
Thank you for making us part of your
Monday. But before we let you get
out of here, KUT wrapped
up the first ever KUT Festival
this weekend. My, what a success it
was. Thanks to all of you who came
out.
We had a great time.
Hopefully you were able to make it
out there to the east side, but if
you weren't, if you had other plans,
don't worry. We have tons of
coverage from the fest over
at kut.org.
And of course on the KUT
app and hopefully in the future
we'll be bringing you some of the
audio from some of the panels that
were featured there at the fest.
Lots to share with you from that.
And taking a little peek into
tomorrow's show.
Right now, the simple text off air
is the only thing on the InfoWars
website.
KUT's government accountability
reporter Andrew Weber will be
joining us with the latest updates
of what is going on with Alex Jones
and Info Wars.
Plus
KUT's Art Beat brings us
the story of Shakespearean troops'
search for a new home as one of the
few Elizabethan theaters left
in the country is shuttered.
A whole lot more coming tomorrow,
maybe I'll be able to talk properly
tomorrow, who knows?
You're going to have to tune in to
find out because this is live radio,
this is Austin Signal.
Thank you for tuning in, we'll be
back at the same time tomorrow and
we'll talk to you then.