News

HGov. Greg Abbo is pulling $359.6 million from the state’s prison budget to keep his Operation Lone Star border security mission running for another 10 months. The militarized immigration crackdown has been beset with problems since the Republican governor launched it a year-and-a-half ago. Meanwhile, Texas’ prison system is dealing with serious staffi ng and cost issues.

HA new report found that the University of Texas at San Antonio is among the top universities in the nation in awarding degrees to Hispanic students. According to Hispanic Outlook on Education magazine, UTSA awarded 3,691 four-year degrees to Hispanic students during the 2020-21 academic year — the eighth highest number in the country. The school ranked 13th for number of master’s degrees conferred to Hispanic students as well.

HTexas’ energy grid hasn’t signifi cantly improved and is still vulnerable to failure in extreme winter weather, a revised report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission found. If the state is hit with a storm comparable to 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, the grid’s operators would be forced to make similar power cuts — contradicting Gov. Greg Abbo ’s recent claim the system is “stronger than ever before.”

Sen. Ted Cruz got a predictably hostile welcome when he ventured into Yankee Stadium to watch the Houston Astros face New York’s home team in the recently concluded American League Championship Series. Cruz was relentlessly jeered by Yankees fans, several of whom were pictured fl ipping him off and one of whom yelled at Texas’ junior senator to “Go back to Cancún.” Cruz also made headlines for seeming to applaud a José Altuve strikeout despite claiming to be an Astros fan. — Abe Asher

YOU SAID IT!

“DPS Director McCraw should RESIGN immediately.”

— U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales

on Twitter, becoming the fi rst major Texas Republican offi cial to demand McCraw step down.

Wikimedia Commons / Gage Skidmore

ASSCLOWN ALERT

Ted Cruz

Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.

Earlier this month, Sen. Ted Cruz once again vied for the title of Biggest Prick on Twi er — an award for which there’s no shortage of competition.

This time, the rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ Texas Republican invaded the privacy of a transgender preschool teacher by exposing his personal details on social media.

Cruz was among several conservatives who retweeted a social media post from right-wing economist and political organizer Phil Kerpen, which included screen shots of an email sent to the parents of kids enrolled at an exclusive Washington D.C. preschool, news site LGBTQ Nation reported.

The email informed parents that a transgender teacher at the school was pregnant. It included tips on how to explain pregnancy to their kids, especially since some may associate pregnancies with only certain genders, according to LGBTQ Nation.

The screenshot of the email exposed the teacher’s name and school, meaning Cruz shared those sensitive details with his 5.3 million followers. Kerpen’s tweet has since been deleted, but the senator’s remains up — only now without the sensitive data a ached.

Since Cruz fi rst retweeted Kerpen, Twi er users have dogpiled the senator over his decision to reveal the teacher’s identity, warning that it could expose a private citizen to harassment and violence.

Apparently, when you’re an assclown of Cruz’s stature, that’s a risk you’re willing to take if it helps score cheap political points with the right-wing base. — Michael Karlis

news

At a public meeting last week, Texas Depart-

ment of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw

insisted he won’t resign and that his department didn’t fail Uvalde families during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School. The beleaguered director admi ed that his department was not “without fault” for the botched police response to the shooting. “I can tell you this right now: DPS as an institution, right now, did not fail the community — plain and simple,” he said.

The campaign of Bexar County District A orney Joe Gonzales asked area television stations to stop running an ad from Republican candidate Marc LaHood claiming that Gonzales has declined to prosecute cases involving possession of hard drugs like heroin and fentanyl. The ad goes after Gonzales for a cite-and-release program for small drug off enses that was developed in partnership with the San Antonio Police Department. Gonzales campaign manager Laura Barberena called the ad “completely false.” A lawyer for the family of Erik Cantu, the 17-year-old critically injured in a police shooting in early October, is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the shooting. Cantu’s parents have asked Bexar County to bring murder charges against the former San Antonio police offi cer who shot their son, and the family’s high-profi le a orney Ben Crump said they’ll also petition the Justice Department to open a probe into whether Cantu was racially profi led. — Abe Asher