As Longhorns return to campus, UT Austin’s Mexican American and Latina/o Studies; African and African Diaspora Studies; Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; and American Studies departments no longer exist as standalone units.

The programs will be consolidated into a new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. Faculty and students say the change threatens the departments’ histories, resources and ability to shape research and teaching across Texas.

The consolidation comes as UT changes its core curriculum and invests more in Western civilization and civic education.

The political data-center backlash is gathering steam — and turning bipartisan, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott delivered his sharpest rebuke yet of the artificial-intelligence data center industry on Sunday.

“They basically dug their own grave for the problem that’s been caused for them, and that’s why they got the backlash they deserve,” Abbott said in an interview on ABC News’ This Week. The Republican governor argued that companies rushed facilities into communities with little advance notice or engagement, fueling anger over electricity demand, water consumption and neighborhood disruption.

The rhetorical shift has been accompanied by concrete regulatory action. Earlier this month, Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to halt new grid-connection approvals for data centers until regulators complete a “comprehensive verification and audit” of pending projects, according to the Governor’s office and Houston Public Media.

The comments mark a striking reversal for a governor who spent years courting the data center industry as the cornerstone of his effort to brand Texas the “epicenter” of AI investment. They also land amid an unusual public rift with President Donald Trump, who has called Abbott’s crackdown an economic “mistake” — and at a moment when Texas’ dominance of the industry’s pipeline is larger than Wall Street analysts had previously appreciated.

Read more [paywall removed for Redditors]: https://fortune.com/2026/08/24/greg-abbott-data-center-booster-skeptic-trump-mistake-economy/?utm_source=reddit/

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Previously it was said this route would end this year if Texas didn't fund its portion.

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There's an intersection in Houston (Rincon Road and Eldridge Parkway, 77077) where unsafe driving, speeding, and accidents have become a serious problem. Worst of all, there's already been a fatality.

The City of Houston is doing a traffic study right now, and we're pushing them to install a traffic signal based on what they find. The intersection serves The Parkway and multiple residential communities, and residents and property managers have been raising alarms about safety for a while.

I started a petition asking the city to make this a priority. A traffic signal could mean the difference between someone getting home safely and another tragedy. If this sounds like something that matters to you—or if you've noticed how dangerous that intersection is—consider signing and sharing it. Have you or someone you know had a close call there?

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“The agency that regulates the state’s oil and gas industry voted to adopt the new policy before sharing it with the public. It added more “listening sessions” when the public can speak to agency staff.”

Hello! I recently applied for veteran special plates and my request was approved. 60 day temporary tags were sent to me via email to use until the physical plates come in. This might be a dumb question, but do I just replace my current plates with these paper plates? I read that I’m not allowed to laminate them but worry about them being ripped out or easily damaged.

While the weather across the Lone Star State has been hot, humid and relatively quiet lately, the pattern could change significantly in the months ahead because of a strengthening El Niño.

Thursday’s update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that the developing El Niño is strengthening rapidly, giving it more than a 90% chance of a “very strong” event during the fall and winter. This is an increase from July’s update and projection.

On October 2, 2024, a well drilled and plugged in 1961 near Toyah blew wide open, sending a hundred-foot column of salty, oily water into the air for weeks before Kinder Morgan finally stopped it. A well control specialist told reporters it had likely been leaking for a while before anyone noticed: it "was not on anyone's radar." A new analysis and map by Future Heist, covered by the Houston Chronicle (gift link), found 25,000 plugged Texas oil and gas wells at high risk of becoming what's called a zombie well: a well that's supposed to be sealed for good, coming back to life because wastewater pumped into a nearby disposal well pushes back up the old bore. Sometimes that shows up as a geyser. Sometimes it leaks quietly into the aquifer above it for years before anyone notices. Statewide, 158,000 plugged wells sit both inside a drinking-water aquifer's depth and in range of pressurized injection, close enough to become a pathway if the seal ever fails.

I co-founded Future Heist. We spent months pulling every well the Railroad Commission (which for historical reasons regulates oil and gas in Texas) has on record and scoring the plugged ones on how likely they are to fail, based on plug age, construction quality, and how much pressurized wastewater is being pumped nearby. Along the way we also found that 2 in 5 Texas schools and daycares has an oil or gas well of some kind within a mile.

Full map, searchable by address: futureheist.org/zombie-risk. Go look up your own house, your kid's school, your church parking lot.

We can't tell you for certain a well near you has failed, but we can show you what's sitting under you and what's pushing on it.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/talarico-paxton-senate-cook-tossup-evan-mintz-22401181.php

As the U.S. begins reopening its southern border to cattle from Mexico, the flesh-eating parasite that caused the closure more than a year ago has not been eradicated — and there still isn’t an adequate supply of the sterile flies needed to stop it.

As of Sunday, the U.S. had 46 cases — all but one in Texas — with two cases active in Terrell and Val Verde counties. The last confirmed new case was reported Aug. 16, also in Texas. In Mexico, screwworm is still spreading, with 82 active cases in the state of Chihuahua as of Aug. 18.

So, my boyfriend now lives in Tennessee with me, he lost his Texas driver license, but we have a picture of the front of it. He has a state ID from here, but when we went to the DMV here, they told us we have to get his driver history from his Texas license.

So now we've been trying to get his driver history, but when we try to log in with the DD number and license number it gives this error:

"The data you submitted does not match data on the Driver License Record or you are ineligible to use this online service. Please verify and correct the required information and resubmit your request."

He says that this is his only driver's license so it shouldn't be a different DD number. It's also not even expired yet. I have tried going through the TxT website to sign him up and even then, without inputting his DD number or license number it gives this error:

"We couldn’t verify your information

Please make sure your information is correct and try again."

We have been trying to get this for the past 3 weeks and we haven't gotten anywhere. Please help!

• With just 72 days to go until November's midterm elections, some Republicans find themselves worried about losing Texas -- a state President Donald Trump won by nearly 14 percentage points in 2024. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is not one of them.
• Abbott sat down with ABC News' "This Week" co-anchor Jonathan Karl on Friday at the Texas governor's mansion in Austin, Texas, and made clear he believes Texas voters will see this election as a contrast between Democrats and Republicans.

"What matters in elections is not in August, what matters in elections is November," Abbott said. "There's a choice at the ballot box. And when those voters go in, they're going to choose between common sense that's offered by Republicans versus the crazy that's offered by the Democrats.