Here are the stories on Texas Standard for Monday, Sept. 4, 2023:
Why are some GOP officials sticking by Ken Paxton?
Article 15 of the Texas Constitution deals with how the Texas Senate should operate as a court of impeachment. Since the rules were first written in 1876, there’ve only been three impeachments in Texas history.
Fast-forward to May 2023 – a mostly Republican Texas House of Representatives voted to impeach fellow Republican Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general. The now-suspended AG faces 20 articles of impeachment – including constitutional bribery and dereliction of duty. The Senate impeachment trial starts Tuesday. House impeachment managers have marshaled thousands of pages of documents as evidence.
Regardless of mounting evidence against Paxton, GOP officials on his home turf, Collin County, are standing by him. The Texas Newsroom’s Sergio Martínez-Beltrán reports on why.
Ken Paxton’s approval rating hits lowest point since 2021
According to a new poll conducted by the Texas Politics Project at UT Austin shortly after Attorney General Ken Paxton was impeached by the House, there was no meaningful change in Texans’ views on whether impeachment was justified.
However, Paxton also registered his lowest job approval rating from among 14 polls conducted since April 2021. Jim Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project, joins the Standard to unpack the numbers.
How many Texans move out of state?
Texans love to complain about people moving in from out of state – especially people from a certain western coast. But how many people born in Texas stick around? According to new research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the answer is: a lot.
The Fed found that people born in Texas are the least likely in the nation to move across state lines – and this fact is a key driver of economic growth in the Lone Star State. Paul O’Donnell, the business editor at the Dallas Morning News, joins the Standard to talk numbers.
Behind the movement to restore access to adoptees original birth certificates
Over the last two decades there’s been a slow but steady movement across the U.S. to restore access to original birth certificates for people who are adopted. This year, South Dakota and Vermont became the 13th and 14th states to do so.
Texas Standard intern Amanda Kari McHugh is an adoptee born in New York, a state that gave access to these birth certificates in 2020. She’s been digging into the efforts to do the same here in Texas: why it matters and what’s holding it up.
Can AI enhance the independence of people with disabilities?
Many people feel uneasy about artificial intelligence. Though the jury is still out on many aspects of the AI revolution – there is at least one use of the technology that has the potential to enhance the independence of people with disabilities. The Standard’s Shelly Brisbin introduces us to it.
Texas school districts struggle to meet school safety requirements
Nearly 800 new state laws took effect Friday – including one that aims to address school safety concerns after last year’s shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. House Bill 3 requires all public schools in the state to have an armed officer on campus during school hours, along with meeting other new safety guidelines.
HB 3 has been getting some mixed responses from parents. While the Legislature is providing some funding to implement its new mandates, Houston Public Media’s Rebecca Noel reports that school districts are struggling to hire enough officers.
