Abbott pushes for expulsion in Texas
El Paso Representative Joe Moody staying in Austin; New NC law makes regulating polluters much more difficult
It's Friday, August 8, 2025 and in this morning's issue we're covering: Abbott’s bid to expel the House Democratic leader goes to a court filled with his appointees, El Paso’s Joe Moody staying at Capitol, not joining other House Democrats in fleeing state to block GOP redistricting plan, Purple Line Construction Displaces 20 Long Branch Families with Water Main Break, California — world’s fourth-largest economy — hit hard by fed immigration raids , OPINION: Entergy wants to use power it creates. That led to the May blackout, Environmental Groups, EPA Spar In Court Over U.S. president's Cancellation of Resiliency Funding, After years of debate, ‘The Sheriff App’ will allow people to use a smartphone to see who is in the Cuyahoga County, Ohio jail, New NC law makes regulating polluters much more difficult, Former mill cities struggle to rehab blighted properties in Western Mass.
Media outlets and others featured: The Texas Tribune, El Paso Matters, Montgomery Community Media, Investigate Midwest, The Lens, Inside Climate News, The Marshall Project, Carolina Public Press, CommonWealth Beacon.
Abbott’s bid to expel the House Democratic leader goes to a court filled with his appointees
By Eleanor Klibanoff, The Texas Tribune
Aug. 7, 2025
"Abbott’s bid to expel the House Democratic leader goes to a court filled with his appointees" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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Texas Democrats had been out of state for less than 48 hours when Gov. Greg Abbott moved to have their seats declared vacant.
The emergency legal filing represents an unprecedented escalation of Abbott’s effort to pass a new congressional map that adds additional GOP seats, as demanded by President Donald Trump. It flies in the face of Texas’ own founding documents, centuries of legal precedent and a recent Supreme Court of Texas ruling, legal experts say.
Even Attorney General Ken Paxton, a fellow Republican, threw cold water on Abbott’s strategy, filing his own brief saying that while he “appreciates the Governor’s passion,” he does not have the authority to bring this type of case.
But just because legal precedent is not on his side doesn’t mean Abbott’s case is doomed. The long-shot filing is before the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, where Abbott has appointed six of nine justices. Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock was Abbott’s former general counsel, as was Justice James Sullivan.
“They have their own independent authority, of course, but it does put them in a tough political position,” said Andrew Cates, an Austin-based attorney and expert on Texas ethics law. “They don’t want to be in the position of potentially biting the hand that initially fed them.”
Abbott’s petition specifically targets Rep. Gene Wu, the House Democratic leader, serving as a test case that could eventually allow him to remove every member who left the state. Abbott asked the court to rule by Thursday; the justices gave Wu until the end of the day Friday to respond.
It is hard to argue that leaving the state to deny the Legislature a quorum is equivalent to abandoning an office, legal experts say. Texas’ constitution sets an intentionally high threshold for quorum — two-thirds of the chamber, compared to half in most other states — in an effort to limit the majority’s complete authority. And centuries of quorum breaks, both in Texas and other states, have resulted in expulsion only once, during the colonial era, when members of the New Jersey assembly, upon regaining quorum, voted to remove their peers who stayed away.
“The law allows for consequences, like arrests and fines, to entice the members back,” said Charles “Rocky” Rhodes, a constitutional law expert at the University of Missouri law school. “If they wanted to say you lose your office, they could have put that in there, but they didn’t.”
Dereliction or duty?
Dozens of Democrats left the state Sunday afternoon, heading for Illinois, New York and Massachusetts, announcing their intent to deny the House the quorum it needs to pass legislation. A total of 57 Democrats were absent when the House gaveled in the next day, leaving the chamber shy of the 100-member threshold.
“We’re not walking out on our responsibilities; we’re walking out on a rigged system that refuses to listen to the people we represent,” Wu said in a statement as the Democrats prepared to depart. “As of today, this corrupt special session is over.”
There have been just 15 legislative walkouts nationwide since 1924, almost all in the four states that require the presence of two-thirds of legislators to conduct business, according to Ballotpedia.
Texas is one of these high-threshold states. A two-thirds quorum has been required by the Texas Constitution since 1845, an uncontroversial proposal for a people who have “long been suspicious of their government and desirous of limiting its powers,” said Texas constitutional historian Bill Chriss.
The framers of the Texas Constitution imagined that there might come a day when members declined to attend in protest, writing that legislators were empowered to “compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner and under such penalties as each House may provide.”
Democrats most recently decamped in 2021 to stop a GOP voting bill, nearly two decades after fleeing to block a similar mid-decade redistricting effort. In both cases, Republicans issued arrest warrants and sent state troopers to look for the missing lawmakers, although since they had left the state, these measures had little effect.
In 2021, when Democrats sued to challenge the arrest warrants, Blacklock authored an opinion affirming that the Texas Constitution explicitly “enables ‘quorum-breaking’ by a minority faction of the Legislature.”
The constitution also allows “quorum-forcing,” Blacklock said, adding that each chamber could decide for itself how to entice members back to work. The next session, the House voted to add a $500-a-day fine for unexcused absences.
Nowhere in that argument does it say that a quorum break constitutes the abandonment of office needed to remove them from their post, Rhodes said. But that’s exactly what the governor argued in his petition.
“Longstanding precedent recognizes that deliberate abandonment of office constitutes a forfeiture of that office,” Abbott wrote in the filing. “Indefinite removal to another state for purposes of avoiding the constitutional requirement that [legislators] ‘shall meet’ likewise vacates the office.”
For a legislator to have abandoned their office, they must have failed to perform their duties and expressed their intent to abandon the position. In the filing, Abbott said the court can infer from Wu’s conduct that he intended to relinquish his office.
“Wu has expressed his intention to abandon the office three times over — with no end in sight — by openly acknowledging his abandonment of his official duties, accepting compensation and other benefits to abandon those duties, and fleeing the sovereign territory he purports to represent,” Abbott wrote.
Jim Dunnam, a Waco attorney and former state lawmaker, said that was an outlandish interpretation of the law. Dunnam led the Democrats on their 2003 quorum break; Republicans called them chickens and sent the state troopers after them, but there was never any talk about declaring their seats vacant, he said.
“If the Supreme Court is going to follow the law, there’s no problem here, because these people have not abandoned their office,” Dunnam said. “They’re doing exactly what they were elected to do.”
Abbott, a former Texas Supreme Court justice and attorney general, should know that this argument stretches the law beyond the breaking point, Dunnam said.
“I would say this whole thing is a joke, but for the pressure we’ve seen that Trump has been able to exercise across the nation, and certainly among Texas Republicans,” he said.
On whose authority?
As the head of the executive branch, Abbott’s ability to remove a duly elected state representative is limited by the state Constitution’s separation of powers clause.
So he’s trying a unique legal mechanism, called a quo warranto petition, that allows state officials to try to oust an officeholder who has abandoned their office.
One part of state law says this type of action must be filed in district court by the attorney general or a county or district attorney. Paxton alluded to this as a potential roadblock to removing quorum-breakers, telling conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that they’d have to file individual lawsuits in each member’s district, many of which are in counties where Democrats dominate the bench.
“We'd have to go through a court process, and we'd have to file that maybe in districts that are not friendly to Republicans,” Paxton said. “So it's a challenge because every district would be different.”
But in Abbott’s filing, he argues that a different statute allows him to file a quo warranto petition directly to the Texas Supreme Court, sidestepping the attorney general and the district courts. In a recent unrelated ruling, the high court said it had reviewed direct quo warranto petitions “on only a few occasions, always denying the writ when we have done so.”
Paxton weighed in Tuesday, sending a letter to the court saying only his office or a local prosecutor can bring this type of legal action. He has vowed to do so if the Democrats do not return to the chamber by Friday.
Abbott countered, saying he was bringing his petition under a different authority than Paxton’s and asking the court to rule before Friday. The justices have not yet weighed in on the petition or the infighting.
The nuances of the quo warranto petition may provide the justices with a procedural off-ramp, allowing them to dismiss the challenge on these technical grounds without getting into the more politically charged merits of the case, Cates said.
“But I don’t think we’ve ever had such exigent circumstances where the governor is the one that is asking, and there’s a ticking clock, a special session, congressional maps and all that,” he said. “So there’s maybe a first time for everything.”
If the Texas Supreme Court were to find that these members have abandoned their offices, Abbott would have to call a special election to fill the seats. They are likely to be replaced by similarly aligned candidates, considering the political makeup of those districts, which Abbott knows, Cates said.
“I think this is going to be a long, drawn-out court fight, and I think every side knows it,” Cates said. My guess is that this is more about a scare tactic to try and win a war of attrition to bring back scared members that were on the fence, and try to trickle their way into quorum.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/07/greg-abbott-texas-democrats-quorum-break-supreme-court-removal/.
The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
El Paso’s Joe Moody staying at Capitol, not joining other House Democrats in fleeing state to block GOP redistricting plan
by Robert Moore, El Paso Matters
August 4, 2025
El Paso state Rep. Joe Moody, the highest-ranking Democrat in the Texas House of Representatives, is not joining his party’s walkout that is an effort to torpedo a Republican congressional redistricting plan, he told El Paso Matters.
“I support my fellow Democrats who’ve left the state to protect our votes. But there are many battles on many fronts in a war,” said Moody, who was appointed speaker pro tem earlier this year by Republican Speaker Dustin Burrows. “The best way I can fight back is at the Capitol, which is why I’ve chosen to stay now that quorum has been broken. I’ll be looking my Republican colleagues in the eyes and asking them to look into their souls: They know this is wrong.”
El Paso Rep. Vince Perez flew to Chicago on Sunday, where most Texas House Democrats have gathered in their effort to block action on redistricting by denying the quorum necessary to do business. More than 51 Democrats are participating in the quorum break, meaning the House can’t take up any action, including redistricting, in the ongoing special session called by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Rep. Claudia Ordaz told El Paso Matters she would not be in Austin this week because of a personal matter. She hasn’t said whether she eventually plans to join the quorum break.
El Paso Rep. Mary González hasn’t responded to requests for comment from El Paso Matters about her plans during the quorum break.
Abbott accused the Democrats of “an abandonment or forfeiture of an elected state office,” and threatened to begin a process to strip them of their office and potentially bring felony charges.
The governor put congressional redistricting on the agenda for the special session that began July 21 at the request of President Donald Trump, who asked Texas Republicans to draft a new congressional map that would add up to five new GOP seats in the state’s 38-member delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans currently control 25 of the seats.
The House Redistricting Committee voted 12-6 along partisan lines Friday to approve a redistricting plan, and the full House was expected to vote as soon as Monday before the Democrats announced their walkout Sunday.
Moody, the only El Pasoan on the House Redistricting Committee, said the plan was designed to please Trump – who he called the “felon in chief” – and strip power from Black and Hispanic Texans.
“I fought these corrupt maps in committee and will continue fighting them every chance I get. Republicans aren’t even hiding it — they’ve admitted these maps are meant to silence voices and votes,” he said in a statement to El Paso Matters. “Trump is destroying our economy, our communities, and our way of life to serve himself, so he knows he’ll lose Congress if he doesn’t cheat. And now the governor is threatening to arrest and remove elected representatives who are using legal, legitimate ways to stand against that.
“All of that is the playbook of dictators, not American leaders. And they confirm that we’re at war for our democracy.”
Moody participated in a 2021 walkout by Democrats that attempted to block election reforms proposed by Republicans. That effort was ultimately unsuccessful and Moody was stripped of his speaker pro tem position by then-Speaker Dade Phelan. Moody said that action had no bearing on his decision to stay at the Capitol for the current redistricting fight.
Perez, who is serving his first term in the House, called the redistricting plan “the most racially engineered map Texas has seen since the end of the Civil War.”
“I could not, in good conscience, stand idly by while Donald Trump and Texas Republicans push a redistricting plan that gives white Texans three times more voting power than Hispanic Texans – including the majority of my constituents in El Paso,” he said.
In a social media post Sunday, House Speaker Burrows said the chamber would convene as planned Monday.
Burrows didn’t elaborate, but in a statement Sunday, Abbott threatened legal action against the absent Democratic House members.
“In addition to abandoning their offices, these legislators may also have committed felonies. Many absentee Democrats are soliciting funds to evade the fines they will incur under House rules. Any Democrat who “solicits, accepts, or agrees to accept” such funds to assist in the violation of legislative duties or for purposes of skipping a vote may have violated bribery laws,” the statement said.
Moody was among a handful of Democrats at the Capitol Monday. The House lacked a quorum and recessed until Tuesday.
Moody blasted Abbott’s threats.
“As for the governor’s threats, while Trump is trying to steal a future election with his maps, our governor wants to steal elections that already happened last year! It’s not just immoral – it’s illegal. He can’t declare vacancies, absolutely can’t fill them, and no honest person could claim a legislative tactic long used by both sides is a crime. It’s disgusting, fascist nonsense,” he said.
The redistricting plan doesn’t significantly alter the partisan balance of El Paso’s two House seats, currently represented by Democrat Veronica Escobar and Republican Tony Gonzales. But the plan would shift key economic engines – including Fort Bliss and El Paso International Airport – from Escobar’s 16th Congressional District to Gonzales’ 23rd District.
Texas Democrats have previously used quorum breaks to block Republican efforts related to elections, most recently in 2021. But Democratic lawmakers eventually returned and Republicans passed their plans.
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Robert Moore
Purple Line Construction Displaces 20 Long Branch Families with Water Main Break
Building out Metro’s long overdue Purple Line continues to disrupt life for county residents.
Four apartment units are condemned and another three require extensive repairs following a water main break that flooded two floors of the Wayne Manchester Towers on East Wayne Avenue in Long Branch on July 25.
Twenty families – a total of 50 people – lost most of their belongings. They were helped by the county to move into temporary living spaces.
How it Happened
According to a statement from Maryland Transit Solutions, a subcontractor construction partner for the Purple Line, construction “encountered an unmarked, abandoned water pipe. This unexpectedly affected a nearby active water main, which resulted in water flowing from the construction site into the nearby Wayne Manchester Apartment building.”
Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission helped stop the flow of water. Sandbags were installed to contain the water, and on-site clean up began, according to the statement from the Purple Line.
Flood Damage
When Del. Lorig Charkoudian learned of the flooding, she went out to the apartments. She arrived about three hours after the 4 p.m. flooding. Already, the apartment management team was ripping out carpeting and cutting off the electricity, she said.
While the flooding had stopped, Charkoudian said, “I did see very high-water markings. I saw carpets soaked and things piled up on mattresses” and other furniture in an attempt to save as much as they could.
“It was clear that there was really significant damage.”
Some of the residents she spoke with “were shaken. I think it was terrifying. The water just came rushing in.” She added, “The good news is people were safe, but there still is a lot of concern about the safety of the building.”
Help for Residents
Charkoudian, along with other officials, are working to make sure residents can put their lives back together. Many residents are not financially well off and can’t afford to go out and refurbish their apartments, she said.
Montgomery County Department of Emergency Management helped the impacted residents, moving them to a nearby hotel and matching them up with services. Impacted residents also are being assisted with filling out insurance claims.
The Wayne Manchester Towers Apartments property management team is coordinating remediation efforts.
Donation Drive
Making Homes Possible (MHP), a nonprofit that builds affordable housing throughout the area, is collecting donations to support the families.
“While the affected building is not an MHP property, we are actively engaged in efforts to preserve the character and strengths of Long Branch to respond to the short- and long-term impacts of the Purple Line light rail, a new transit line that is scheduled to open in late 2027,” MHP wrote on its donation page.
According to a social media post by Delegate Lorig Charkoudian (D-20), “Everyone is safe but several families lost a lot.”
Suzanne Pollak
California — world’s fourth-largest economy — hit hard by fed immigration raids
by Jennifer Bamberg, Investigate Midwest, Investigate Midwest
July 30, 2025
Federal immigration agents descended on California farms in early June, targeting farmworkers from blueberry fields to vegetable packing facilities.
This focus on rural communities followed a burst of indiscriminate workplace raids in urban Los Angeles, causing scores of noncitizens statewide to avoid leaving home, causing a 3.1% dip in the state’s workforce, according to a new study from researchers at UC Merced.
The report notes that only two moments in recent history compare to the June 2025 drop: the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. In this case, the state’s private-sector workforce shrank in just one month, faster than the 3.3% rise in unemployment seen during the entire first year of the Great Recession.
The consequences of the recent downturn have rippled throughout California’s economy, which could have far-reaching effects for the rest of the U.S., according to the study.
“If a worker doesn't go to work on a farm, that's produce that may end up rotting in the field and might never find its way to grocery store shelves,” said Edward Flores, a sociologist and faculty director of the Community and Labor Center, the largest rural labor center in the U.S. “There's multiple jobs in the supply chain that can be affected.”
Researchers analyzed monthly employment data from the U.S. Census Bureau and found that employment by noncitizen workers dipped 7.2% between May and June due to the aggressive immigration enforcement. The results of the study should prompt policymakers to take heed, according to the researchers.
This downturn also affected the workforce of U.S. citizens. Researchers suggest that as noncitizen caregivers stayed home due to the raids, California families relying on their care (paid or unpaid) may have left the labor force as well to fill those critical gaps. The job losses hit women the hardest, who are more likely to work in caregiving roles.
While 198,428 noncitizens avoided work during the week of June 8, Flores said an additional concern is for those working in the worst conditions with the fewest worker protections. Many, he said, may be trapped in forced labor “because of the threat of retaliation, the lack of a safety net, the lack of legal status, and the threats that may be levied by an employer,”
Researchers note that while they're still studying the national economic implications of ICE raids, the large-scale operations seen in California in June have since ceased. This followed a July federal judge's order prohibiting ICE from racial profiling. The order came a day after 361 immigrant farmworkers were arrested — the largest federal immigration operation since Trump took office — and one fleeing farmworker died after falling from a greenhouse.
The study authors suggested that policymakers examine how to protect workers who shelter in place during heightened immigration enforcement and infuse cash into the economy where revenue was lost.
In the case of the Great Recession in 2007 and 2008 and during the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers invested in one-time stimulus or disaster relief spending.
This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Jennifer Bamberg, Investigate Midwest
Entergy wants to use power it creates. That led to the May blackout.
Entergy is a part of MISO, a regional grid operator. But – unless it is ordered by regulators – Entergy leaders are not interested in fully participating in a competitive, cooperative grid that transmits power on a regional level. To do that, Entergy might have to rely on other utilities’ power supplies – and charge less to Entergy customers.
by John Norris July 31, 2025
Occasionally, we can experience a blackout, or what experts call a “load-shed event,” – usually when we have scorching summer temperatures on a weekday, when air conditioners are running overtime, factories are humming, and businesses are open.
None of these were the case when New Orleans had a blackout on Sunday, May 25.
Behind the factors that did not cause the blackout in May is the root issue: Entergy continues to block long-range transmission planning, a necessary part of electric reliability.
Instead, Entergy has a history of using its transmission system to prevent competition and maximize profits from its fleet of gas plants. That strategy prioritizes Entergy’s bottom line but sacrifices reliability for its customers, as we saw on May 25.
The unreliability will continue if regulators will not step up.
Some regulators want to blame the Mid-Continent Independent System Operator (MISO) for the May outage. MISO is the operator of the electric grid for the states that Entergy supplies –Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas – and a dozen other states stretching all the way up to the Canadian border. On May 25, MISO had to make the call to shed load to prevent a more catastrophic event, such as cascading power failures that leave more people without electricity for longer times.
MISO is also the coordinator of long-range transmission planning (LRTP) for the electric transmission grid. Like other nonprofit regional grid operators, MISO coordinates the flow of electricity across high-voltage, long-distance power lines within its region. Think of it as traffic on the road. Because of bad weather or roadwork, cars in one place can jam up. The flow of electricity can be similarly congested in one region due to heavy demands. Managing flow from a regional level helps to prevent outages and emergencies.
Entergy joined MISO in December of 2013 after a unanimous vote by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). I was one of the five FERC commissioners who voted for approval.
It is important to know the context of Entergy joining MISO. At the time, Entergy had been under investigation for nearly five years by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for anti-competitive practices. The DOJ determined that Entergy had been operating its transmission system so that owners of low-cost gas power plants couldn’t access Entergy’s service territory. As a result, Entergy consumers were paying higher prices.
Because of the DOJ’s extensive investigation, Entergy agreed to sell its transmission assets and join a Regional Transmission Organization, also known as an Independent System Operator (RTO/ISO).
When pushed by the DOJ, Entergy had other options, but it joined MISO. MISO has two parts, MISO South (most of Louisiana with parts of Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas) and MISO Central-North (parts of Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Montana, and Manitoba, Canada).
The two parts are linked by a narrow connection that looks like the Panama Canal as it runs through southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas. That creates an extremely limited North/South interconnection that’s often referred to as a bottleneck, because it only allows an extremely limited ability of power to flow between MISO North and MISO South.
Entergy never sold its transmission assets to become part of the regional MISO electricity flow. And the DOJ never followed through to enforce the transaction. A dozen years later, not one MISO Long Range Transmission Plan (LRTP) line has been built in Entergy’s service territory to bring power in when needed or send it elsewhere. In fact, not one long-range line has even been planned.
For all practical purposes, nothing has been done to address Entergy’s anti-competitive practices, as determined by DOJ.
During the time since Entergy joined MISO, the first wave of LRTP projects in MISO North has been entirely completed. The next two phases of LRTP in MISO North have been planned and are in various stages of approval by state commissions and the next phase of LRTP plans in MISO North are set to launch next year.
Even for those who plan optimistically, it takes 10 years to plan, approve and build an LRTP line.
While the New Orleans City Council and the Louisiana Public Service Commission were looking for answers and solutions at the recent public hearing on the blackout, MISO’s best response was they would start planning LRTP for MISO South in 2026. No one mentioned that that means the earliest an LRTP transmission line with a positive cost-benefit ratio for consumers would be in place is likely 2036, nearly a quarter of a century since Entergy joined MISO.
Any transmission line planned through MISO’s LRTP process must have a positive cost-to-benefit ratio to ensure that consumers benefit from the investment. Entergy will tell you they have invested billions in transmission. But none of those projects have gone through MISO’s LRTP process, to ensure there is broad regional benefit and there is a positive cost-benefit ratio for consumers. In fact, MISO recently estimated Entergy’s $3.3 billion transmission investment in 2023 had a .01 net benefit.
The two LRTP projects now in the approval process for MISO North average well over a 2-to-1 net benefit for consumers and those lines were planned across the region for everyone’s benefit through the MISO stakeholder process.
Entergy’s lines were planned by and for who? You guessed it, Entergy.
Throughout Entergy’s membership in MISO, I have witnessed and heard of numerous efforts by Entergy and its staff or consultants to the Public Service Commissioners and NOLA City Council to stall, block, interfere – or throw up barriers of any type, all to stop efforts to conduct LRTP in MISO South.
You can blame MISO but it won’t do much good. MISO and all RTO/ISOs are a creation of FERC intended to open our electric grid for competition, plan efficiently for the future, and enhance reliability. Where RTOs have been embraced, they have worked and worked well.
But RTO/ISO membership is voluntary. MISO is essentially toothless to demand full participation in the LRTP process.
I’m not even suggesting you blame Entergy for the blackout and a dozen-plus years of blocking attempts to address the cause.
Entergy is just doing what they have always done, maximize profits for shareholders. If they can block competition and corner the market for their gas generators by designing the transmission system that benefits them first, they will do it – and they are good at it.
The state public service commissions and New Orleans City Council, who regulate Entergy, must require Entergy to fully participate in MISO’s LRTP process. This is the key to planning and building a transmission system that will bring greater reliability for New Orleans and all of Entergy’s service territory, along with more competitively priced electricity and more diverse electric generation.
Entergy must be held accountable for working with MISO to plan for the transmission needs of tomorrow, today.
You know what they say about when is the best time to plant a tree – it’s today. Each day you wait is another day without shade. The same goes with long range transmission planning. Each day you put it off you are paying higher prices and risking blackouts.
John Norris served as a Commissioner on the Federal Regulatory Commission and as Chairman of the Iowa Utilities Board (PSC). If he knew what he knows today in 2012 when he voted for Entergy to join MISO, he would have voted no. He would love to see a better transmission connection between MISO South and North so that Louisiana could build and provide low-cost solar power throughout the MISO region.
John Norris
Environmental Groups, EPA Spar In Court Over Trump’s Cancellation of Resiliency Funding
A U.S. District Court judge in Washington hears arguments over the cancellation of funding for flood mitigation and other projects. Among them are those that would have benefited Southwest Virginia.
By Charles Paullin
August 6, 2025
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
WASHINGTON—Last month, the town of Dante in Southwest Virginia’s Appalachia region saw about 3.5 inches of rainfall over a couple of hours. The heavy downpour ran off the steep mountainside surrounding the town, and surged upward from nearby Lick Creek.
The normal amount of rainfall for the town in July is about 5 inches, according to the National Weather Service’s office in Morristown, Tennessee. No one died in the flooding that ensued, according to local reports, but 13 people were injured in the town of about 600.
The episode of rainfall leading to flooding is not new for the communities that are struggling to revitalize themselves after the decline of the coal industry. Damage and destruction hit the Virginia towns of Hurley in 2021 and Whitehood in 2022, and then swept across Southwest Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee last fall when Hurricane Helene devastated the region with intense rainfall and catastrophic flooding.
One nonprofit group, Appalachian Voices, has sought to use funding from the federal government to build flooding resiliency in Dante and four other communities to better prepare for those extreme weather events scientists say have been amplified by climate change.
Nonetheless, President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency terminated the Biden administration’s $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grant Program in February—and is sticking with its decision, despite loud protests from community members in Dante and beyond.
On Tuesday, attorneys for Appalachian Voices and other plaintiffs from around the country in a class action lawsuit asked Judge Richard J. Leon in U.S. District Court to stop the Trump administration’s funding termination. EPA attorneys countered by urging him to dismiss the suit. Leon promised a decision soon.
“It needs to continue,” Tom Cormons, executive director of Appalachian Voices, said in an interview after the hearing of the work funded by the now-terminated grants approved by Congress as part of former President Joe Biden’s signature climate act, the Inflation Reduction Act. “The rule of law matters.”
The case before Leon is one of two lawsuits the Southern Environmental Law Center has brought against the EPA on behalf of Appalachian Voices and other clients. The other is a case filed in Charleston, South Carolina, that has resulted in an unfreezing of funds. The Trump administration is now appealing that ruling.
Obligated or Not Obligated
The case stems from two executive orders signed by Trump to halt the funding. The first order, “Unleashing American Energy,” directed federal agencies to stop spending funds from the Inflation Reduction Act. The second, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” ordered equity-related funding to end within 60 days.
Ben Grillot, senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, alongside attorneys from Earthjustice, the Public Rights Project and Lawyers for Good Government, argued that Trump’s orders violated the Constitution’s separation of powers by having the executive branch void congressionally mandated spending.
The IRA, argued Grillot, created the program under the Clean Air Act. Funds for the program were then obligated when awards were made to applicants, of which there were thousands that underwent review.
Further, Grillot said that Travis Voyles, the EPA’s assistant deputy administrator—and former secretary of natural and historic resources in Virginia—violated the Administrative Process Act when he ordered termination of the grants “wholesale” based on the president’s priorities and without a detailed analysis.
“Those themselves are not sufficient,” Grillot said, referring to the executive orders granting any authority to terminate the program.
Jessica A. Lundberg, a Justice Department attorney representing the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin, argued that the case is moot since Congress recently passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included a recession of unobligated funds for the program.
Even though the Congressional Budget Office found that the OBBA would return about $500 million in unobligated funds by terminating the program, Lundberg argued that by ending the program, Congress had made the program free for rescission of the remaining $2.5 billion.
Through the OBBBA, Lundberg said, Congress stated it “wants its money back.”
Grillet countered that emails between EPA staff and the controller show that de-obligating funds doesn’t fully occur until appeal decisions are finalized and outstanding reports are completed—neither of which happened.
“It’s disingenuous for them to come back now to claim those funds were not obligated,” Grillot said.
The EPA declined to comment on the pending litigation.
After thanking both sides, Leon said he would “do my best” to render a decision “soon.”
“It’s not easily understandable,” he added.
Southwest Virginia Struggles
The grant award Appalachian Voices received came under the Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreements subset of the program. Its work would have been reimbursed for up to $500,000.
Across five communities in Southwest Virginia, the funding would have gone toward creating resiliency hubs, plans to demolish buildings with asbestos that stood in floodplains, and constructing a river walk in the town of Pound.
“It’s an asset to the neighborhood,” said Grillot, adding that the resiliency hubs would have been places where first responders could find refuge during extreme weather events.
In Dante, a community identified as a Special Flood Hazard Area in FEMA’s new flood maps, the planned resiliency hub also would have provided refrigeration for medications, Emma Kelly, new economy program manager at Appalachian Voices, said in an interview.
Solar and battery storage, with a backup generator, would have been added to provide clean, reliable and affordable electricity, she added. Dozens in Dante used a makeshift center during the July 18 storm that displaced six families for two weeks.
“Folks are mad, folks are hurt, folks feel betrayed,” said Kelly, adding that reimbursement meant expenses would have been verified. “At every step of the way community members were with us. They saw that there wasn’t any waste, any mishandling. They saw the value in what they were creating.”
The group has pursued funding from foundations, other nonprofits and state agencies to pick up the slack, but has come up way short because of resource limitations, she said. Kelly praised Virginia for its partnership by assisting with various potential sources of funding, including its Community Flood Preparedness Fund.
Administered by the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the CFPF uses revenues from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the carbon market that Gov. Glenn Youngkin has withdrawn the state from.
“As the climate continues to get warmer,” Kelly said, storms will “stay longer in the same area. We’re just going to see more and more.”
Charles Paullin
Who Is in the Cuyahoga County Jail? Finally, There’s an App for That
After years of debate, ‘The Sheriff App’ will allow people to use a smartphone to see who is in the Cuyahoga County jail.
By Mark Puente
This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.
It has taken years of deliberation, but you can now use a smartphone to find out if your loved ones or friends are in the Cuyahoga County jail.
In recent weeks, Cuyahoga County quietly unveiled The Sheriff App, which updates hourly to list who is booked into the jail.
The move comes seven months after The Marshall Project - Cleveland and Spectrum News 1 reported that the sheriff’s department lagged years behind other counties in allowing the public to search online jail rosters.
Ohio’s other large counties like Franklin, Hamilton, Summit and Lucas have provided their daily roster information online for years. Smaller counties that border Cuyahoga have also done the same. Cuyahoga County had been the exception.
The app, available on Apple and Android platforms, is also a tool used by crime victims seeking assurances that their perpetrator is in custody.
For Cuyahoga County, the app provides an incarcerated person’s age, race and gender, along with booking information that includes a photo, the date and time the person entered the jail and the charges they are facing.
Numerous sheriff’s offices across Ohio use the app, which provides daily jail rosters, push notifications, news and information on how to add money to commissary accounts for incarcerated people. It also allows the public to provide crime tips.
The app has links to an FAQ section for obtaining county services, researching real estate information, identifying registered sex offenders, victim notifications and other items. The app is not designed to report emergencies.
Advocates say having immediate access to jail rosters is vital, not only to law enforcement but to the public.
Dana Acy, owner of Dana Bail Bonds and Insurance Services, applauded the move as she often must try to find people in jail. The app, she said, could also be the first place to check if relatives or friends go missing.
“Familes are always in the dark,” Acy said. “We are moving toward an age of transparency. This is good.”
In the past 15 years, Cuyahoga County has had a revolving door of appointed sheriffs under three county executives.
There have been years of constant turmoil with sheriffs being second-guessed by politicians on whether to allow public access to jail rosters. In 2018, then-Sheriff Cliff Pinkney joined the app. A year later, county officials hit the delete button.
In March, the county’s Board of Control approved a measure to spend more than $84,000 for a firm to maintain and support the app for three years, records show.
Like other counties, Cuyahoga is using smaller-sized images to limit republishing booking photos so companies or others cannot monetize the faces of the incarcerated people.
While the app is now available for the public to download, county officials caution that future updates will be added, including news and information about the sheriff’s department.
The lack of jail access has also affected attorneys and even police detectives, who just like citizens, often have to wait for a jail employee to answer a phone — if the call is answered at all — to learn if someone is in jail.
Chief Deputy Aaron Reese, the sheriff’s second-in-command, helped lead the effort to get the app. He acknowledged the department is behind others, but said the agency hopes to bolster community engagement with the new app.
He cautioned that it could take another year for the app to be used on desktop computers. The county is in the process of selecting a vendor to develop a new jail management system, he said.
“This app is important for us in being transparent and interacting with the community,” Reese said. “We want to make it easy to find information.”
Mark Puente
New NC law makes regulating polluters much more difficult
by Jane Winik Sartwell, Carolina Public Press
August 7, 2025
North Carolina just made it much harder to pass expensive regulations. HB 402, now law after legislators overrode a veto from Gov. Josh Stein, adds major hurdles for new and existing rules — including those that would limit PFAS and other toxic chemicals in drinking water.
The new law, also known as the REINS Act, requires any rule or regulation costing more than $20 million over five years to pass through the General Assembly and become a law.
Republicans celebrate the law as a way to increase accountability, arguing that our state’s costliest decisions should be made by elected officials in the legislature, not “bureaucrats” on the boards of state agencies. Important regulations will still pass if they are worthy, they say, pointing to the law as a way to protect businesses from burdensome and frivolous regulations.
Environmental groups, on the other hand, are in a state of despair. Regulations on chemicals in the drinking water are expensive and have powerful, deep-pocketed adversaries. The law — which some characterize as a power-grab by the legislature — makes it much less likely that new rules will pass, they say. It also pulls existing regulations into question.
“Our state is not going to get any good rules on PFAS or 1,4-dioxane moving forward, or any environmental rules that provide broad protection to communities, because of this law,” Jean Zhuang, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told Carolina Public Press.
“That’s going to directly affect communities suffering from these chemicals in their drinking water.”
The law heightens the requirements for less costly rules as well. A rule costing more than $10 million over five years must see a unanimous vote by the relevant board or commission, and one that costs more $1 million must get at least two-thirds.
Will the law mean that important regulations get passed less often? It remains to be seen. But for now, environmental groups are sounding the alarm.
In the case of PFAS, this unanimous or two-thirds vote would have to come from the Environmental Management Commission. That commission is heavily weighted against regulation, thanks to a 2023 law that grants more appointees to the legislature than the governor. Zhuang characterizes a unanimous vote from that commission as “nearly impossible.”
“The Environmental Management Commission went from a rulemaking body that protected North Carolinians to a rulemaking body that is folding to polluters who lobby it at every point,” Zhuang said.
Supporters of the law also emphasize the corruptibility of board members at North Carolina’s executive branch agencies. That’s why they want the most expensive regulations in the hands of elected legislators as a way to enhance “democratic oversight.”
"Some regulations are so substantial and so costly that they ought to be approved by the General Assembly rather than by unaccountable bureaucrats,” Mitch Kokai, senior political analyst at the John Locke Foundation, told CPP.
“If a rule is going to have that much of a financial impact on people, then it probably should be hard for it to get through.”
Republican legislators who sponsored the bill echo Kokai’s concerns. Rep. Grant Campbell, R-Cabarrus, told CPP that the bill will serve to enforce checks and balances.
Rep. Kelly Hastings, R-Gaston, emphasizes the way the bill could protect businesses and economic interests.
“We're forcing men and women who have children and mortgages out of work just based on an arbitrary and capricious rule and regulation,” Hastings said. “We have seen how rules and regulations promulgated by people who aren’t elected can get out of hand and destroy businesses.”
Rep. Jeff Zenger, R-Forsyth, argues that North Carolina is over-regulated. Indeed the law applies to all rules and regulations, not just chemicals in the drinking water. All this regulation has a negative impact on the economy, he says.
“We’re so over-regulated across the board, and it’s a stealth inflation driver,” Zenger said. “In so many industries, regulation is driving up costs. Those costs get passed onto the consumer. We’re regulating ourselves into serfdom.”
However, the financial impacts of PFAS will likely be felt regardless of regulations.
If the state won’t regulate harmful chemicals at the source, drinking water utilities will have to remove the contamination themselves. The costs for the required upgrades and equipment, in most cases, will be passed onto ratepayers through higher bills. The costs don’t disappear, Zhuang argues, they just shift from polluters onto consumers.
Some water utilities feel similarly about the cost of limiting regulations.
“We are disappointed to see HB402 become law, which will now make it harder for North Carolina’s water utilities to successfully advocate for regulatory standards on contaminants like PFAS and 1,4-Dioxane,” writes Cammie Bellamy, spokesperson for the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority.
“CFPUA has long advocated for statewide standards to limit discharges of harmful contaminants. We will continue to work with our region’s legislators and the Environmental Management Commission to find solutions that protect ratepayers and hold polluters accountable.”
Environmental advocates say the timing couldn't be worse, with federal environmental protections also under threat from the Trump administration. The convergence of rollbacks leaves advocates without a lot of room to breathe.
“With EPA shirking their responsibility, and DEQ currently not using their existing authority, HB 402 is a huge barrier to protecting North Carolinians from toxic PFAS pollution,” Zhuang said.
Despite this major setback, environmental groups aren’t giving up on the need for regulations to safeguard drinking water.
“It's not defeat,” Stephanie Schweickert, director of environmental health campaigns for the NC Conservation Network.
“I'm unwilling to accept defeat on something so important. But the REINS Act is a step backward for environmental health in North Carolina."
This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Jane Winik Sartwell
‘Easier said than done’: Former mill cities struggle to rehab vacant, blighted properties in Western Mass.
by Hallie Claflin, CommonWealth Beacon
August 7, 2025
WHILE WALKING along Holyoke’s sprawling canals, it’s hard to ignore the former mill city’s industrial past and historic design. Established as a textile and paper manufacturing center, Holyoke became the largest producer of paper goods in the country by 1885. It was also home to some of the largest silk and alpaca wool mills in the world.
Now, dozens of those old mills sit boarded up along the canal system and have been mostly vacant for decades. Some are close to collapsing, while others are covered in graffiti. Scattered across the center of downtown, the battered brick buildings are an untapped opportunity and serve as a constant reminder to city leaders of what could be.
In recent decades, historic mills and old industrial buildings in Gateway Cities across the Commonwealth have been renovated and converted into much-needed housing. The projects are often a way for cities to preserve their historic charm while creating modern residential units in high demand. They also help to revitalize post-industrial era cities that suffered from the long-term decline of manufacturing.
But while Eastern Massachusetts cities like Lowell and Lawrence have had success – with almost no former industrial buildings left to restore – cities farther west with weaker housing markets, which don’t enjoy the luxury of being connected to Greater Boston via the commuter rail, still struggle with an array of blighted properties that have yet to be developed. In these communities – like Holyoke, Springfield, and Fitchburg – the housing market doesn’t support rents that attract developers for these projects.
State and federal funding is almost always needed, but those tax credits and payouts come slowly to only a handful of developers who are willing to invest years into a project before making a profit. But many aren’t willing to stick around, according to Aaron Vega, Holyoke’s director of planning and economic development.
“It's hard to get state money. There's a backlog,” said Cassandra Witthaus, associate director of real estate at The Neighborhood Developers, a nonprofit affordable housing developer in Chelsea, Revere, and Everett. “It might take a year or two, sometimes longer than that, depending on the project.”
The stigma that comes with being a diverse, low-income city is another factor that stunts housing development in Holyoke. Small businesses that would otherwise promote growth and further development don’t want to open next to old, blighted buildings that are boarded up, Vega said.
“Developers seem to just pass Holyoke by, and that's where the perception comes in,” said local resident and developer Denis Luzuriaga. “That whole perception of Holyoke being bad – plus developers just not seeing the right kind of projects here – I think we're somewhat stuck. The question is, how long will it take? Will it be years, or decades?”
Even with a 10-year anchor tenant providing a stable source of revenue, most banks turned Luzuriaga and his brother Marco down when they asked for a loan to fund a small restoration project that ultimately created 18 market-rate apartments in an old wire manufacturing mill. Some said it was too risky because the brothers were first-time developers, according to Luzuriaga. Others said they wouldn’t loan the money because the project was in Holyoke.
The restoration project was lucky to receive funding from the state’s Housing Development Incentive Program – the only state tax incentive for market-rate housing in Gateway Cities. City officials say the program is essential in areas like Holyoke, where market conditions create barriers to private investment. But Marco Luzuriaga said competition for HDIP funding is high, and they were turned down for other projects despite having architectural plans and cost estimates.
These restoration projects are often seen as a cheaper and faster alternative to new housing construction, which developers say couldn’t be further from the truth.
Blighted properties and century-old mills often require extensive environmental clean-up and remediation efforts, which is time-consuming, expensive, and drives developers away. Five developers have backed out of restoring the 230,000-square-foot former Merrick Thread Mill because the cost alone to get the building “site ready” has been estimated between $12 million and $20 million. Half of the building needs to be torn down, and the lead paint, asbestos, and other contaminants need to be abated.
“I joke about how much money has to go into a property before you even put up drywall,” Vega said.
MassDevelopment – a state agency intended to improve economic growth – offers site-readiness grants, but Vega said it isn’t nearly enough to cover the remediation costs in many of the mill buildings in Holyoke. The state will pay around $40,000 to cover deed research, an appraisal, a survey to ensure they have the right property lines, and hiring a structural engineer who can assess whether the building is stable – a far cry from the millions of dollars needed to get a building like the former Merrick Thread Mill ready for development.
In some cases, the stars have aligned – allowing a handful of historic mills and old buildings in Holyoke to be converted into market-rate or affordable housing. These bright spots are slowly helping to revitalize the city while serving as a model for other potential projects, but there’s still a long way to go.
WinnDevelopment, the housing construction arm of WinnCompanies that has championed mill restoration projects around the state, is now finalizing some 88 units of affordable housing in the old Farr Alpaca Mill – a five-story property covering over 161,000 square feet on the Holyoke canal that has been vacant since the 1970s. It was one of Holyoke’s largest and most run-down historic wool mills. The units will be ready for residents in a matter of weeks and will rent for around $1,200 per month.
Funded in part by federal and state historic rehabilitation tax credits, low-income housing tax credits, and other loans from the state – the project took 10 years to complete.
“Ten years to get 88 units of housing. We're not solving the housing crisis at that rate anytime soon,” Vega said. “The state has great programs, but you don't get everything all at once. An empty mill building that's already been empty for 20 years – every year, every winter, every rainstorm, more water in the building – it just gets worse and worse. What might have been a $28 million project 10 years ago is now a $40 million project.”
But the requirements established by historic tax credit programs sometimes clash with building code requirements. For example, a historic commission might tell a developer to preserve an old stairway railing, while state building codes require it to be raised six inches, Vega said.
Unlike most other mill buildings in Holyoke, the city owned the property, which made acquisition cheaper and easier for Winn. The city also held the mill for 10 years so Winn didn’t have to pay taxes on it. WinnDevelopment counsel and project director Hagop Toghramadjian said Holyoke has remained patient – knowing that these types of risky restoration projects take time, and state funding trickles in ever-so-slowly.
“Other private sellers and cities aren’t as patient, which kills a project,” Toghramadjian said.
Unlike many other developers, Winn is mission-driven and in it for the long haul. Most would balk at a 10-year timeline, Vega said, but Winn typically holds on to their properties and is not looking for a quick return on investment.
“When you start, you have to have a really healthy amount set aside for unknowns,” Toghramadjian said.
While developing the property’s parking lot across the canal, Winn discovered an entire buried mill. Asbestos and other contaminants had been pushed underground where the drainage structure was meant to go, which required remediation and added a $1 million cost to the project.
The Brownfields Tax Credit Program offers credits to cover costs incurred during the clean-up of contaminated properties, but Toghramadjian said the state only provides that funding for the costs that developers know about before they start.
“So you have to know what you're doing, but you're always finding things in these buildings,” Marco Luzuriaga said.
A roof collapsed unexpectedly during the renovation, which required the installation of steel bracing from the outside and raised costs by another $1 million, Toghramadjian said.
The cost of housing construction is just as high in cities like Holyoke as it is in Greater Boston communities, but the rents that can be charged are much lower. This creates a funding gap when developers determine whether they can make a profit from a project.
“In Lowell, it's a smaller gap. Here, the gap is tremendous. It's enormous. It's not just a little finger on the scale, it's the entire project,” Toghramadjian said. “The rents pay for virtually nothing…the rents will get you further in Lowell.”
People earn higher incomes in Lawrence and Lowell than they do in Holyoke, allowing housing developers in those Eastern Massachusetts cities to bank on higher market rents to make projects work. In 2022, only a third of the units in Lawrence’s redeveloped mills were considered affordable, according to Jessica Andors – executive director of Lawrence CommunityWorks.
In cities like Holyoke where the housing market doesn’t support higher rents, developers opt for affordable housing to help close that gap upfront with low-income housing tax credits rather than wait to make a profit from market-rate rents. Vega said they need a mix of both to secure a healthy housing market that also attracts people with higher incomes to the city.
The state’s Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit program covered 10 percent of Winn’s project in Holyoke – which made converting the historic mill more attractive than starting from scratch, said Toghramadjian. The program is less competitive than other low-income housing incentive programs, but it still takes a long time to be paid. Small amounts are committed to the project every few months, according to Toghramadjian.
He said the secret to developing more vacant, blighted properties in cities like Holyoke is to expand both the state and federal historic tax credit programs and deliver the funding faster. He pointed to other states like North Carolina, which have tax credit programs that are focused specifically on the development of mills.
“You have to expand and create a new, focused program on mills in Gateway Cities that isn't just $500,000,” Toghramadjian said. “We’re talking tens of millions of dollars per project.”
Large projects like Winn’s are few and far between in Holyoke, and the city is in need of more experienced developers to take on bigger projects. But that alone won’t solve the problem.
“Even if I had five big developers in Holyoke like WinnDevelopment, they are all going to be fighting for the same pot of money,” Vega said.
Private property owners are often unable to navigate the state and federal funding system, and some decide not to convert the mills at all. Vega said Holyoke largely relies on small, local developers that work closely with the city, are located nearby, and aren’t interested in making a fast profit. While these developers help to restore smaller buildings – such as 10 or 15-unit projects – they often lack the staff needed to navigate grants, tax credits, and regulations that accompany larger mill restorations.
“They’re really expensive to do, but their value isn't just in the dollars and cents,” Toghramadjian said. The projects can, over the long term, be profitable, he said. But they’re also helping to “turn Holyoke around.”
This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
