Texas Standard for Aug. 17, 2022: How Houston is using nature to combat flooding

Several major flood projects in Houston have relied on using concrete to quickly channel water into the bay. But nature can also play a key role in slowing down, absorbing and filtering floodwaters. Also: Mayors in New York and D.C. are pushing back against Texas sending busloads of migrants to their cities. And: A rise in mental health issues among students and how schools in places like Lubbock are trying to trying to help.

All of that and more today on the Texas Standard:

By Texas StandardAugust 17, 2022 9:34 am,

Here are the stories on Texas Standard for Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022:

Can primary results point to November?

Rep. Liz Cheney lost her Republican primary in Wyoming last night. The results weren’t surpirising to many politics watchers, since Cheney helped lead the committee investigating the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Still, do the results from that primary and other recent elections portend results in November? Brandon Rottinghaus, political science professor at the University of Houston, joins us to discuss the impact.

Texas kids struggling with mental health, self-harm as school starts back

The COVID-19 pandemic made a national mental health crisis among children worse. Stressors like isolation and grief led to more diagnoses of anxiety and depression. Those are just some mental health challenges kids are dealing with as they return to school this month. As part of our look at back-to-school issues, Texas Tech Public Media’s Sarah Self-Walbrick tells us about another that’s seen a concerning rise in Lubbock.

Flood control goes green: How Houston is using nature to combat flooding

Several major flood projects in Houston have relied on using concrete to quickly channel water into the bay. But nature can also play a key role in slowing down, absorbing and filtering floodwaters. In the next installment of Houston Public Media’s new podcast Below the Waterlines: Houston after Hurricane Harvey, Katie Watkins looks at how nature-based solutions can make Houston more resilient.

A political statement? Exploitation? A free ride? Busing migrants to the East Coast raises concerns

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to bus thousands of migrants to Washington, D.C., and New York increasingly has become a political flashpoint. Conservatives applaud the move, while immigrant rights groups and the cities’ mayors say it’s a stunt that exploits and misleads migrants. KERA’s Stella Chavez explores. 

Tractors run on software nowadays. There’s a push to unlock the code.

These days, tractors are high-tech machines, and companies like John Deere keep a tight lid on access to what’s behind the touch screens used to control them. Now, a security hacker has released a “jailbreak” for Deere tractors, and it’s drawing attention to a conflict between the right-to-repair ideal, and the need to maintain security for machines that are integral to food production. Lily Hay Newman, a senior writer at WIRED, has more. 

‘Partition’ podcast explores Britain’s devastating division of Indian subcontinent

Seventy-five years ago this week, British colonizers left India and the subcontinent was divided: India became the place for Hindus and Pakistan for Muslims. It’s known as the partition. Millions of people were uprooted and moved from their homelands; hundreds of thousands died on the journey, or in the violence that ensued as the division highlighted differences among people who once coexisted. Neha Aziz is an Austin-based writer delving into the division it in a new podcast called “Partition.” 

A fact-check with PolitiFact Texas

A division of the IRS that has existed for more than a century is getting a lot of attention on social media. U.S. Rep Matt Gaetz says the government is arming IRS employees because “Joe Biden is raising taxes and disarming Americans.” Is that a fact? We’ll hear from Nusaiba Mizan with PolitiFact Texas, based at the Austin American-Statesman. 

All this, plus the Texas Newsroom’s state roundup and Wells Dunbar with the Talk of Texas.

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