Texas
If Biden withdraws, Democrats must act quickly to replace him on the Texas ballot
![If Biden withdraws, Democrats must act quickly to replace him on the Texas ballot](https://thumbnails.texastribune.org/CY56QNyhXcAKgIwJsyIpvFNimrE=/1200x630/filters:quality(95):focal(1x393:2999x2000)/static.texastribune.org/media/files/ef2de0403852f7d411d69998c6c29e09/Biden%20Economic%20Summit%20REUTERS.jpg)
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The news of President Joe Biden potentially exiting the presidential race has raised questions about how his Democratic replacement would get on the November ballot across the country. State law suggests a new nominee wouldn’t have much of a problem doing so in Texas, if the party acts soon.
The two major parties have until Aug. 26 to submit the names of their presidential candidates for the Texas ballot, giving Democrats five weeks to make changes.
The Texas election code states that the Texas Secretary of State can certify a political party’s replacement nominee for president or vice president if the original nominee withdraws, dies or is declared ineligible by the 74th day before the presidential election day, which is Aug. 23 this year, if the party’s state chair submits the replacement nominee no later than 5 p.m. of the 71st day before the election day, which is Aug. 26.
This means if Biden drops out of the presidential race against Donald Trump, the Democratic Party could select a new nominee during its national convention Aug. 19-22 just in time for the nominee to appear on the Texas ballot.
Biden faces mounting pressure from fellow Democrats, including Congressman Lloyd Doggett of Austin and U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey who have called for him to withdraw from the race after he tripped over words and seemed to lose his train of thought during the June presidential debate.
For weeks, Biden has resisted such calls, but he has reportedly been listening more openly to worries from top Democrats about the risks of him staying in the race and losing, according to CNBC. The longer Biden waits to withdraw, the harder the logistics of replacing him on the ballot become, according to Votebeat.
Even though Election Day isn’t until Nov. 5, election officials across the country also have to account for state election deadlines and for voters, including members of the military, who will be voting by mail and need additional time to receive and return their ballots. For example, Maricopa County in Arizona said that its ballots need to be finalized by Aug. 22, Votbeat reported.
In Texas, counties manage the printing of their own ballots, and include the names of the candidates given to them by the secretary of state, according to Votebeat.
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That office sends those names in late August, after the conventions. Military ballots go out on Sept. 21, and must be printed days ahead of that. Trudy Hancock, the election administrator in Brazos County, told Votebeat that the county’s ballots are typically finished by Sept. 10 to allow for proofing and to account for any delays.
If Biden drops out after ballots are printed, electors – the party representatives who cast their state’s votes for president in the electoral college – could vote for the person the Democratic party nominates as his replacement in states that allow it, Votebeat reported.
To win the presidency in the Electoral College, a candidate must get at least 270 votes from the 538 electors across the country. Each state gets as many electors as it has U.S. senators and representatives in Congress. In most states, including Texas, whoever wins the most votes from voters gets all the Electoral College votes for that state.
In rare instances, some electors have cast votes for someone other than their party’s official nominee, which has stirred some concerns of “faithless electors” in recent years. In Texas, a 2023 update to the state’s election code requires electors to sign an oath that they will vote for the chosen candidate.
Natalia Contreras, Jen Fifield and Jessica Hussman of Votebeat contributed to this story.
Big news: director and screenwriter Richard Linklater; NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher; U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-California; and Luci Baines Johnson will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!
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Texas
Global IT outage being pinned on Texas cyber firm CrowdStrike
![Global IT outage being pinned on Texas cyber firm CrowdStrike](https://dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/FPZWZX4FEUC3SPCYZVBX5M64EI.jpg?auth=d5d00a33371e5b9794308f763ba1f1ad8e542222ca005d78259c4641ff518744&height=467&width=830&smart=true&quality=40)
Behind a massive IT failure that grounded flights, upended markets and disrupted the operations of corporations around the world is one cybersecurity company: Austin-based CrowdStrike Holdings Inc.
Known as a dominant supplier of software that protects businesses from ransomware attacks, CrowdStrike was thrust into the spotlight on Friday as it struggled to fix a faulty patch that led to cascading, system-wide failures, paralyzing the operations of clients ranging from banks to global retail giants to health-care systems on Friday.
CrowdStrike was founded by former executives of antivirus pioneer McAfee Inc. and has grown into the leading maker of a relatively new type of security software that’s considered among the best defenses against ransomware and other hacking threats. It controls what market research firm IDC estimates is nearly 18 percent of the $8.6 billion global market for so-called “modern” endpoint protection software, just ahead of archrival Microsoft.
CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We…
— George Kurtz (@George_Kurtz) July 19, 2024
The type of software CrowdStrike supplies is separate and distinct from older, more limited types of security software. Traditional antivirus software was useful in the early days of computing and the internet for its ability to hunt for signs of known malware, but it has fallen out of favor as attacks have become more sophisticated. Now, products known as “endpoint detection and response” software that CrowdStrike develops do far more, continually scanning machines for any signs of suspicious activities and automating a response.
But to do this, these programs have to be given access to inspect the very core of the computers’ operating systems for security defects. This access gives them the ability to take disrupt the very systems they are trying to protect. And it is how Microsoft Windows systems came into play in Friday’s outage.
Representatives for CrowdStrike confirmed online reports that a glitch in the company’s Falcon software was responsible for disabling potentially millions of corporate and government Windows computers around the world and causing the dreaded “blue screen of death.”
The company pegged the incident to “a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts,” in a statement on Friday and said the outage wasn’t down to a cyberattack or security breach. Anyone using a Mac or Linux machine isn’t impacted, the company said, adding that “a fix has been deployed.”
An apparently separate incident involving Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud services also caused widespread disruption on Friday.
While cybersecurity professionals say CrowdStrike’s technology is a strong way to defend against ransomware, its cost — which in some cases can be more than $50 per machine — means that most organizations don’t install it on all of their computers. What that means, however, is that the computers that have the software installed on them are among the most important to protect, and if they go down, key services can fall with them.
One outstanding question is whether CrowdStrike’s software fix can be rolled out automatically or manually.
“You’ll have men in white vans going around to try manually fix this problem even when they put out a fix,” said Alan Woodward, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey, in an interview with Bloomberg News. “To use the laptops, they’ll have to manually intervene — that is a big job.”
There’s also the question of how the bad rollout happened to begin with.
“CrowdStrike is meant to keep these machines safe,” Woodward said. “This is the sort of thing ransomware would do, but imagine ransomware simultaneously hitting the biggest organizations in the world — container ports in the Baltics, hospitals, railway stations, they’ve all been hit at once because of this one little file.”
CrowdStrike’s customer base comprises large organizations that have a large number of remote machines to manage, he added. “The economic impact is going to be huge.”
– Jordan Robertson and Shona Ghosh for Bloomberg
Texas
Texas judge freezes assets of surrogacy escrow owner
![Texas judge freezes assets of surrogacy escrow owner](https://gray-wwsb-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/OU2NNYRNKFA6NL5TQA2JNKICIQ.bmp?auth=c61c0930271b42c1642e0c5f1603f50793c9685e4b2a9254d36bc0cdf30ad55d&width=1200&height=600&smart=true)
HOUSTON (WWSB) – On Wednesday, a judge in Houston, Texas ordered the assets of Dominique Side, the owner of Surrogacy Escrow Account Management, be frozen.
“It’s sad that she hasn’t said anything because we’re really vulnerable. You know, this process makes you vulnerable,” said Kelly Palladino, an intended parent from Sarasota who invested money into SEAM to have a baby.
Palladino and her husband put over $60,000 into SEAM and previously said that their carrier is now pregnant with the money most likely gone.
Texas-based attorney Marianne Robak is representing over 24 families who are in the same position as the Palladino’s. Those families claim that SEAM stole their money. According to court documents, the sole owner of SEAM is Dominique Side.
“Once those are put into a constructive trust by the court, then we will work towards recovery. Towards dispersing those funds to the intended parents,” said Robak.
Court documents listed the totals for some of the families represented by Robak, ranging anywhere from $30,000 to $100,000. The document also stated “for years, SEAM has been systematically misappropriating millions of intended parents’ escrow funds to wrongfully enrich Dominique and her business partners, Anthony Hall (”Hall”), Fredrick Denson (“Denson”), and Kevin Yancy (“Yancy”).
The documents carried on explaining one point with bank records “show that Dominique transferred more than $2.2 million of the intended parents’ escrow funds to bankroll her music career as “Dom,” a racy rap and R&B singer and music producer. The escrow funds were used to create Dom’s music videos and social media content. The escrow funds to fund Dominique’s lavish trips all over the world and to purchase designer clothing and luxury vehicles.”
“They were used for Dominique’s own life, to fund her lifestyle, to fund her businesses, and grow her businesses, and essentially to hide it from all of the intended families,” said Robak.
Side was not present in the courtroom, however her business partner Hall took the stand.
“She told me there were some issues with some of the funds,” said Hall. “For me, doing the right thing was making sure she owned and was accountable.”
Court documents showed three days after Side sent the final email to intended parents, June 14, 2024, that she could no longer provide comment due to an on-going legal issue, Hall became the sole owner of side’s business Vgn Bae Studios.
Documents also state three months prior to that, on March 2, 2024, “Hall formed a new escrow company called Life Escrow, LLC. Life Escrow, LLC’s principal place of business is located at the same exact business address as SEAM – the building owned by Defendant.”
It carried on explaining “Dominique may have transferred any escrow funds remaining in SEAM’s accounts as of June 14, 2024, if any, to bank accounts in the name of Life Escrow, LLC.”
Palladino previously explained with her carrier now pregnant, and the funds gone, it is going to be difficult.
“We’ll have to go into our 401k’s see what we can do. Work harder! Work more! and try and do what we can but its going to be hard,” said Palladino.
According to court documents, a trial date is set for the week of January 13, 2025.
The FBI posted last month online asking any potential victims of SEAM to come forward as part of an investigation.
Copyright 2024 WWSB. All rights reserved.
Texas
Conner Qualifiers: Shredding with the Texas A&M Skate Club
![Conner Qualifiers: Shredding with the Texas A&M Skate Club](https://gray-kbtx-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com/resizer/v2/D4DVNAMVWRAB3CORC674WSRBYY.png?auth=777c69cf4fdb33ee1dd28b68096fc57e8f8a86f4f26fb4a37322b8bbc69ffb0a&width=1200&height=600&smart=true)
BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – One of the Olympic’s newest sports has a popular community in Bryan.
Skateboarding was introduced to the games during the Tokyo Olympics.
The City of Bryan has two skateparks community members can enjoy, Williamson Skatepark and Henderson Skatepark.
Bryan Parks and Recreation Supervisor Cody Junek says the skateboarding community in Bryan has grown.
“You can see 30 to 35 skaters out here in the afternoons. They’re out here very often and they’re they say that this place is always busy.”
The Texas A&M Skaters, an organization on the campus of Texas A&M University, say it’s exciting to see the sport they love being showcased on a world stage like the Olympics.
“I think it’s really cool because skateboarding is still kind of a niche thing. It also gives kids a better outlet to get their stresses out. If they don’t have the money to afford a gym, they can go skate out in the park,” said Texas A&M Skaters Treasurer Zachary Munguia.
The Olympics features two skateboarding competitions.
“Skateboarding Park” is judged by the height and speed of the tricks and “Skateboarding Street” is judged by technique and control.
Copyright 2024 KBTX. All rights reserved.
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