Texas GOP legislator files bills to ban DEI in public schools
Good morning. It's Friday, February 28, 2025 and in this morning's edition we're covering a Texas GOP legislator that filed a bill that would ban DEI in the state's K-12 public schools, South Carolina's housing authority offering builders money to increase affordability, Maryland legislature makes cuts to youth mental health amid fiscal crisis, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry commits to more permanent domestic violence funding, New Orleans' ongoing short-term rental saga, City of Clarksdale asks Mississippi judge to dismiss lawsuit against newspaper, Wyoming politicians support recent purge of federal employees while those recently laid off pick up the pieces, how state courts can shape and check federal power, California's shelters failing to help homeless, and more.
Media outlets and others featured in this edition: The Texas Tribune, South Carolina Daily Gazette, Mississippi Free Press, Capital News Service, Louisiana Illuminator, Verite News, Mississippi Today, Maryland Matters, WyoFile, State Court Report, CalMatters, The Assembly, Adirondack Explorer, Asheville Watchdog, Bolts.
To continue reading the rest of each article, please click the link at the end of the excerpt.
A new resource from the State Democracy Research Initiative makes the current text of all 50 state constitutions available and searchable on one site. This was from State Court Report.
If you're a North Carolina resident and voted in the N.C. Supreme Court race that is still not certified, please check the list of over 60,000 votes that Jefferson Griffin is trying to discard after narrowly losing to Allison Riggs.
Stephen Whitlow from Triangle Blog Blog has more information. Readers can also visit the Orange County, N.C. group's website The Griffin List to search names and more.
For more about the GOP challenger, check out The Assembly’s article by Jeffrey Billman and Michael Hewlett.
Republican lawmaker files bills to ban DEI in Texas K-12 public schools
Senate bills 12 and 1565 would withhold funding from Texas public schools that don’t comply with the state’s DEI ban.
By Jaden Edison Feb. 24, 2025
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A top Texas senator filed legislation Monday that would extend the state’s ban on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives to K-12 public schools, marking the first step in fulfilling a priority of Gov. Greg Abbott’s this year.
Sen. Brandon Creighton, the Conroe Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Education K-16, introduced both Senate Bill 12 and Senate Bill 1565, measures seeking to withhold funding from Texas public schools that don’t comply with the state’s DEI ban.
During the 2023 legislative session, Texas passed a law banning diversity offices, programs and training at publicly-funded universities. Abbott has since called on lawmakers to ensure that “no taxpayer dollars will be used to fund DEI” in K-12 public education.
“Schools must not push woke agendas on our kids,” Abbott said during his State of the State address in early February. “Schools are for education, not indoctrination.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
SC housing authority offers builders $10K per home to increase affordability
By: Jessica Holdman - February 24, 2025
COLUMBIA — The state’s housing agency wants to help build 30 new homes around South Carolina that sell for far less than most.
In an effort to increase the number of affordable homes on the market, the state Housing Finance and Development Authority is seeking builders to participate in a pilot program to construct homes that can be sold for $175,000 or less.
While that might sound like a lot of money for some, finding a home for less than $200,000 in the Palmetto State is difficult to do, said Richard Hutto, the agency’s executive director.
The median listing price of a home in South Carolina is $350,000, according to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank.
But the cost can be much higher depending on the region. The most expensive county to buy a home is Beaufort, where the median price in January for homes sold was $432,000, according to the latest report from the state Association of Realtors.
The state needs three builders willing to build 10 homes each. The homes must be at least 1,000 square feet. There are no restrictions or specific goals on their location.
To help with the cost, the state is offering builders $10,000 for each home built.
“We have to find solutions to the current lack of workforce housing for those who are ready to become homeowners,” Hutto said.
“It’s a complex problem and will require the efforts of not only builders and lenders, but of legislators, local governments and city planners as well,” he continued. “SC Housing is bringing its financial resources to the table to show that this type of housing program is possible and needed throughout the state.”
To be eligible to buy the home, a family must have an annual income of $127,200 or less.
The state also will require buyers to take out a 30-year mortgage from one of the state housing authority’s participating lenders.
“There is no better way to build wealth and to pass on wealth to future generations than to have affordable housing,” Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Hopkins, said when he first heard about the state housing authority’s efforts.
The head of the Home Builders Association of South Carolina, Mark Nix, said he’s glad to see the state trying something new to make homes more affordable.
But he also warns it likely won’t be easy.
Land is expensive, and many cities and counties in the state have enacted strict requirements on how small they’ll allow lots to be for new home construction, Nix said.
-- South Carolina Daily Gazette
Mississippi Protesters Decry DOGE and Trump’s Attacks on Trans People, Immigrants
by Shaunicy Muhammad February 21, 2025
JACKSON, Miss.—Anna Corcoran had grown exhausted with just complaining about national politics. She wanted to share her frustrations in a way that felt meaningful.
Although the 18-year-old Brandon, Miss., native grew up in a staunch Republican household, she found herself at odds with President Donald Trump’s policies targeting immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and women’s reproductive rights.
So on Feb. 5, she took to the streets for a protest outside the Mississippi Capitol Building in Jackson, Miss. She joined about two dozen other demonstrators who wanted to express their outrage over Trump’s policies.
As other protesters shouted in unison that “no one is illegal on stolen land” and to “never forget January 6,” Corcoran told the Mississippi Free Press that it was her first time exercising her First Amendment Right to protest.
“I’m here to fight not only for myself and my sister but all of those who can’t fight. I grew up thinking that voting red was the Christian vote but I don’t want to let that man in office represent what a Christian is,” she said, standing with fellow protester, 18-year-old Leslie Reeves.
While the Trump administration appears “focused on immigrants and abortion,” they should be drafting policies to tackle “mass shootings and climate change,” Corcoran added.
The protesters also expressed their frustration with the involvement of tech billionaires like Elon Musk in the federal government’s affairs. “It’s been three weeks and we’ve gotten rid of essential departments in unconstitutional, unlawful moves that should not be allowed to happen,” a protester named Samantha who only wanted to share her first name, told the Mississippi Free Press. “We’ve got things challenging in court, but where are our representatives?”
Musk leads The White House’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, commonly known as DOGE. With a purported mission to slash government spending, DOGE has led the mass layoffs of workers across the federal government, including an attempt to eliminate the federal humanitarian agency, USAID. Musk has drawn heavy criticism, with people accusing him of having a conflict of interest and of using DOGE to attempt to access private data about citizens.
Maryland spent big on youth mental health — but then the budget crisis hit
By Sasha Allen
Catholic Charities of Baltimore won state grants to fight chronic absenteeism in three Maryland public school districts by connecting troubled students with the mental health services they need.
Thrive Behavioral Health won state funding to work with students with severe behavioral issues in five school districts to keep the youths from being removed from school — and the agency said its tactics are working.
Overall, the new statewide youth mental health program that funded those two efforts supported behavioral health services for more than 58,000 students in its first eight months of operations from March through October 2024. Four out of every five of Maryland public schools received aid for mental health services under the state’s effort.
But in a last-minute scramble to balance Maryland’s fiscal 2025 budget, the General Assembly cut this year’s funding for the state’s fledgling youth mental health program from Gov. Wes Moore’s recommended $110 million to $40 million. And with the state’s fiscal problems deepening, Moore is recommending the state allocate $40 million annually through 2030 to a program he once suggested should get $130 million a year starting in fiscal 2026.
Meagan Pantelis, a clinical social worker at Thrive Behavioral Health, said the proposed cuts would decimate services for students that, in many cases, are just getting off the ground.
“Whenever I found out about that proposed cut, the very first thing that came to mind is that Gov. Moore is wanting to balance a budget on the backs of our children,” Pantelis said. “I just find that to be just egregious. I mean, why are our children the population that we are targeting? Why are they not the population that we want to build up and support?”
Moore, however, has stressed the state must act to close a structural $3 billion budget gap driven in part by the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the 10-year, multibillion-dollar education reform plan that created the youth mental health program.
“We only have difficult decisions ahead,” Moore said in his State of the State address in early February. “We must close this $3 billion budget gap.”
The mental health crisis
Among its many reform efforts, the Blueprint established a new agency — the Maryland Consortium on Coordinated Community Supports — to manage the new statewide youth mental health effort. The General Assembly then provided the agency with $119.7 million over two years to set up its operations and then issue its first $111 million in grants in February 2024.
There’s a reason why the General Assembly initially invested so much in youth mental health. During the 2022-23 school year, over a quarter of Maryland high school students reported their mental health was not good at most or all times, according to a Maryland Department of Health survey.
The percentage was only slightly lower for middle school students, with 22% reporting their mental health was not good at most or all times. Even more students in both middle and high school reported feeling sad or hopeless for at least two weeks in the past year.
“We all know generally that there’s a mental health crisis,” said Lorianne Moss, the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission program manager. “So as sort of the preamble to our first call for proposals, we laid out some data.”
That data, from the Centers for Disease Control, showed 40% of high school students experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. Citing such statistics, the consortium urged mental health programs and nonprofits across the state to apply for funds.
Applicants requested a total of $380 million in grants, said Mark Luckner, executive director of the Maryland Community Health Resources Commission, which oversees the consortium. That’s more than three times more than the consortium had to allocate.
Nevertheless, the state funded mental health service providers in every county. The program also allows service providers to offset treatment costs if families do not have access to insurance, or if students have high copays.
While Luckner and Moss praised the achievements from the first round of grants, they declined to comment on its uncertain future.
Preventing suicide
Preventing youth suicide is one of the consortium’s key goals, said Dr. John Campo, director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Sixteen of the consortium’s 129 grants so far focus on suicide prevention.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 10-14 and third for people ages 15-24, according to the most recent CDC data.
“Suicide kills more young people in that age group than cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illnesses, infections of all kinds, meningitis, pneumonia, HIV, COVID — the whole nine yards,” Campo said. “Add them all together, suicide kills more people than all those things combined.”
Campo, who is also vice president of psychiatric services at Kennedy Krieger Institute, a Baltimore facility that specializes in treating people with neurological, developmental and psychological issues, was invited to join the consortium because of his expertise in the field.
Suicide rates among youth and young adults increased 62% nationwide from 2007 to 2021, according to the CDC. Meanwhile in Maryland, the teen suicide rate increased by more than a third from 2014 through 2022.
Campo said the state’s health care system has been ill-equipped to deal with that increase.
“Mental health crisis isn’t a priority in most emergency departments,” Campo said.
Campo is one of the co-chairs of the consortium’s best practices subcommittee, a group that developed a list of evidence-based mental health practices for grantees to implement.
Each program targets a different facet of the mental health crisis. The responses are also tailored to the varying levels of severity of the mental health conditions different age groups experience.
The consortium found through surveys targeted at both students and parents that 90% of students and families were satisfied with the services.
“A lot of these practices have been tested,” Campo said. “If regional organizations adopt them and implement them with fidelity, we really do want to believe that there will be positive outcomes associated with it.”
From the city to the shore
The youth mental health crisis touches all of Maryland, and so does the state’s response — but grants are tailored to the vast differences among Maryland’s urban, suburban and rural communities.
In Baltimore City, the 11 grants the consortium issued take into account a stigma surrounding mental health services, said Jennifer Cox, director of the University of Maryland School Mental Health Program, which received a $970,000 grant to run a number of programs.
“We think in Baltimore City, we have to be a little bit more creative than just saying, ‘Come get help,’ ” Cox said. “We know we have good things to offer, we just need to find a good way to offer it.”
In working with trusted community organizations such as churches and youth centers, the program has been able to reach people who would otherwise not seek out mental health treatment, Cox said.
Services range from in-school counseling from certified clinicians to parent and caregiver education programs.
“We have to invest in it in a significant way now and going forward for the next 30 years because so many of our young people are suffering,” said Britt Patterson, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “As a result, the adults in their lives are also struggling.”
The consortium funded a similar but much larger array of programs in Prince George’s County, which received $24.9 million — the most of any county. The funding will set up a mobile response team to respond to young people experiencing mental health crises while increasing online and in-person counseling and other services.
One of the county’s largest grants, totaling $2.7 million, went to EveryMind, a nonprofit that is vastly expanding its mentoring and therapy offerings as part of what it calls “Project Wellness.” Projects include training sessions for parents and school staff to teach them more about mental health, including how to manage crises.
“This initiative will create a supportive environment where students and families can truly flourish, meeting their mental health needs with compassion, cultural sensitivity and care,” said Patrice Harrell-Carter, director of Project Wellness.
Meanwhile, the state’s efforts on the largely rural Eastern Shore stress increasing access to treatment in a region that’s short of professionals to respond to the youth mental health crisis. According to the October 2024 report, “Investing in Maryland’s Behavioral Health Talent,” Maryland is nearly 50% short of the mental health workers it needs.
“There’s a resounding message of, we just need more,” said Beth Anne Dorman, CEO of For All Seasons, a behavioral health and rape crisis center that received a grant to expand its services in Kent County, the state’s least populous. “We need more.”
Caroline County, where two organizations won grants to expand their mental health services, faces the same situation, said Derek Simmons, the county’s superintendent of schools.
“We are a rural county that is less wealthy than a lot of parts of the state,” said Simmons, co-chair of the consortium’s best practices committee. “So access to behavioral health is near and dear, and a real challenge where I’m at.”
An uncertain future
Yet the state budget crunch looms as a threat to its youth mental health efforts.
If the General Assembly agrees with the funding levels suggested in the governor’s budget, programs that just started last year may have to be eliminated, said Del. Eric Ebersole, a Democrat who represents parts of Baltimore and Howard counties.
“That group worked in good faith to bring providers online,” said Ebersole, a consortium member. “If the government loses them, can you get them back?”
Dan Martin, senior director of public policy at the Mental Health Association of Maryland, said the proposed cut in planned funding comes at a time when youth mental health care is more important than ever.
“At a time when 18% of high school students and 24% of middle school students have seriously considered suicide in the past year, a reduction of this size in school mental health funding could prove disastrous,” Martin said.
If the General Assembly approves Moore’s budget proposal, the grants distributed by the program in fiscal years 2025 and 2026 combined will be cut 28% from the total amount distributed the prior two years.
Asked for comment, Moore’s office stressed the governor’s proposed allocation for fiscal year 2026 and beyond is exactly what the General Assembly approved for 2025.
“Gov. Moore is maintaining the current level of funding for the Maryland Consortium on Coordinated Community Supports,” wrote a spokesperson from the governor’s office. “The Governor strongly supports behavioral health treatment for Maryland’s children, and maintaining current levels of funding during the state’s budget crisis reflects that commitment.”
But the Moore spokesperson’s statement ignored that only a year ago, a Moore budget proposal called for significantly expanding funding for the consortium to $130 million annually from fiscal years 2026 through 2029. Instead, the current proposal allocates $40 million per year through fiscal year 2030.
The Maryland Community Health Resources Commission is urging action to try to persuade the General Assembly to restore funding to a higher level. The organization is circulating a fact sheet with information on the consortium, the work it’s done and what a permanent cut in funding would do to students and schools.
“Use the above information and write an email to your legislators asking them to restore funding to the Community Supports Partnership Fund,” the fact sheet said. “Provide testimony (either written or oral or both) opposing the cut” at General Assembly hearings.
And under the “why is funding needed” section, the sheet reads: “Dramatic worsening of the behavioral health of children and youth over the last decade.”
– Capital News Service is a student-staffed reporting service operated by the University of Maryland’s Phillip Merrill College of Journalism. Stories are available at the CNS site and may be reprinted as long as credit is given to Capital News Service and, most importantly, to the students who produced the work.
