Texas
Wrong-way crash fatalities are a problem in Texas. Here’s why
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Whereas on his method to his nightly shift Tuesday evening, Dallas police officer Jacob Arellano was caught by a wrong-way driver. Arellano, 25, died the subsequent day to the grief of his colleagues and plenty of in Dallas.
Improper way-crashes are uncommon, making up lower than 1% of crashes all through the state a yr, Scott A. Cooner, Program Supervisor with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, mentioned.
“However once they do occur they nearly all the time have a deadly or an incapacitating harm related to them,” he mentioned.
Consultants supplied the profile of how typical wrong-way driving accidents occur.
They happen generally on freeway intersections and exit ramps between midnight and 5 a.m., with a spike at 2 a.m. when bars start to shut.
Drivers, intoxicated about two thirds of the time, will generally flip left onto an exit ramp in try and enter onto a freeway, as an alternative of crossing beneath the freeway after which turning left.
Not solely are wrong-way drivers generally drunk, they’re usually closely inebriated. The typical driver has over twice the authorized restrict of alcohol of their system.
Arellano, a three-year veteran of the pressure, was driving northbound on Spur 408 close to Kiest Boulevard on his method to begin his shift. The fallacious method driver in a sedan hit his car head-on in the course of three lanes.
The preliminary crash precipitated Arellano’s car to be pushed into the proper lane the place it was hit once more by a tractor-trailer. His automotive then rolled a number of instances, police mentioned.
Authorities mentioned Wednesday the motive force of the sedan could have been intoxicated.
Knowledge supplied by the Texas Division of Transportation (TxDOT) exhibits in 2021, simply 5 of the town of Dallas’ 227 crash fatalities concerned wrong-way driving on one-way roads.
Up to now in 2022, wrong-way driving has been a contributing consider 4 of the yr’s 152 crash fatalities in Dallas.
In line with AAA Texas, the state leads the nation in wrong-way driving crashes. From 2015-2018, 309 fatalities got here from wrong-way crashes, based on analysis.
Cooner mentioned wrong-way crashes generally happen at intersections and on frontage roads in metropolitan areas, in addition to on one-way streets in downtown areas. As a result of Texas has so many main cities, the state is a “chief” in some of these crashes in america, but additionally a frontrunner in prevention analysis.
Prevention and detection
Downside areas like these intersections have been the main focus of analysis, Cooner mentioned, for the reason that early 2000s when plenty of excessive profile fatalities got here from wrong-way driving.
Primary prevention of wrong-way fatalities goes again to driving 101. The yellow stripe must be on the drivers left and the write stripes on their proper.
One other frequent prevention methodology is raised pavement markers that mirror crimson within the lights of a car driving the fallacious method down a street. These are the plastic markers usually positioned on the stipes within the middle of roads.
“Mainly if you happen to’re seeing crimson on these pavement markers, you understand you’re going the fallacious method,” TxDOT Northeast Texas communications director Tony Hartzel mentioned.
Cooner mentioned different fundamental measures have included decreasing wrong-way and “Do Not Enter” indicators to face just a few toes off the bottom. Analysis has proven intoxicated drivers are likely to deal with the street straight in entrance of them and proper over their hood, as an alternative of correctly checking their environment.
“They’re making an attempt to cite unquote, be secure,” he mentioned.
Decreasing signage to eye degree catches the eye of a drunk driver.
The second arm of countermeasures, Cooner mentioned, has been detection and alert expertise.
Sensors within the pavement and on indicators and radar gear can detect the actions of a car going the fallacious method. Alert techniques corresponding to flashing lights and even audible warnings can urge the motive force to show round.
These detection and alert techniques are extremely efficient Cooner mentioned, and most wrong-way drivers self-correct earlier than getting into a freeway or freeway.
Michael Rey, a spokesperson with the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) mentioned loops, or sensors within the street used to detect automobiles getting into or current the tollway can be used to sense and monitor wrong-way drivers.
The NTTA put in a thermal digicam detection check on the southern finish of the North Tollway two years in the past. The digicam can sense warmth coming in the direction of it after which activates a collection of lights to try to alert the motive force to their error.
“The overarching message I’ve is we’re making an attempt to speak nearly all the time with impaired drivers and that could be a very tough problem,” he mentioned.
The group has additionally lowered signage in an initiative to discourage fallacious method driving, and has a message board alert system to warn different drivers on the tollway.
“However this occurs in a short time,” Rey mentioned.
Sooner or later, Cooner mentioned analysis may result in different drivers being alerted to the presence of close by wrong-way drivers via speaking on to their car.
TxDOT remains to be “within the assessment stage” on the timeline of deploying detection expertise within the Dallas district, Hartzel mentioned.
A spokesperson for the Metropolis of Dallas mentioned in a written assertion, “In restricted situations, the Metropolis is testing different instruments corresponding to reflective tape on signal poles and flashing lights on indicators,” to forestall wrong-way accidents.
In 2021, a complete of 4,489 individuals died in motorized vehicle visitors accidents all through Texas, a 15.2% improve from 2020, based on TxDOT.
Twenty-four p.c of these fatalities occurred in crashes the place a driver was drunk.
“We will’t countermeasure our method out of that,” Cooner mentioned. “Irrespective of how effectively we’ve designed, the markings, the indicators, all of that it’s largely a driver habits difficulty.”

Texas
Who’s to blame for Texas flooding tragedy? There is a lot of finger pointing.
The catastrophe was caused by a perfect storm of difficult-to-forecast rainfall and fast-moving water. Some wonder if budget cuts made things worse.
Search for Texas flood survivors intensifies
A search for Texas flood survivors intensified as Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for nearly two dozen Texas counties.
The Texas rains hadn’t even slowed before the debate began about why forecasts had underestimated the devastating flooding over Independence Day weekend.
Local and state officials, social media users and even the meteorology community raised questions. What were the National Weather Service forecasts? Why is it so hard to know where rain will fall? Did staff reductions at the weather service, and other budget cuts by the Trump administration contribute to the catastrophe? What role did weather balloons play in the storm forecasts?
Answers to some of these questions and many others may never be adequately answered, especially for the families of dozens of children swept away by floodwaters.
At least 81 people died between July 4 and 6 and dozens more were injured or remain missing, state officials said. On a weekend when families often celebrate with cookouts and fireworks, these families, overwhelmed with grief, were providing DNA samples so a state laboratory could rapidly identify victims.
A series of circumstances, colliding at the worst possible location and time, caused the tremendous flooding, several meteorologists told USA TODAY. During a July 6 news conference, Texas state officials said there would be much to discuss in the weeks ahead.
A few things are known, including how difficult it remains to pinpoint where thunderstorms will drop their heaviest rain, what the weather service said and when, and staffing levels at two local forecast offices.
The horrific tragedy arrived in the midst of a maelstrom already brewing over the National Weather Service, its parent agency and the Trump administration’s budget cuts.
It’s “clear that many people are allowing their desire to score political points to color their insights and opinions on this tragedy,” Alan Gerard, who retired earlier this year from the National Severe Storms Laboratory, wrote in his Substack blog on July 6.
“The National Weather Service office did everything they should do from everything I can tell,” said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground, a commercial forecasting agency, and a former hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters.
Despite the recent cuts to NOAA, the National Weather Service performed well in the Texas tragedy and in the recent deadly flooding in Kentucky, Masters said. “It reminds us how important it is to have talented, experienced people at a well-funded National Weather Service.”
“But we are pushing our luck,” he noted,” if we think the cuts at NOAA won’t cause a breakdown in our ability to get people out of harm’s way in the future.”
Were weather forecasts wrong?
Although the warnings arrived less than 24 hours before the flooding started, long-time weather service veterans and regional experts say that’s not all that unusual in this region. It’s a known shortcoming of the localized rain models forecasters use. They can’t yet pinpoint exactly where intense rain might fall and when on an individual community.
One expert, Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, said it appears the weather service employees in Austin/San Antonio did what they could, based on the available information.
“From what I saw, the warnings were pretty timely,” said Nielsen-Gammon, a meteorology professor at Texas A&M University,
The weather service office first advised on July 1 and 2 that a very moist air mass was moving in that would increase rain chances across south-central Texas with heavy rain at times that could lead to minor local flooding.An early morning forecast on July 3 by the NWS Weather Prediction Center said the region should expect “unseasonably moist” air that could bring 1 to 2 inches of rain an hour and lead to flooding, with approaching storms tapping into abundant tropical moisture.
As the day progressed, a clearer picture emerged of how weather systems were interacting above Texas to form storms. An “urgent” flood watch at 1:18 p.m. July 3 warned heavy rain, with isolated amounts of 5 to 7 inches, could cause flash flooding and “excessive” runoff that could flood rivers and streams. The watch covered eight counties, including Kerr and Bandera where some of the heaviest flooding occurred.
By 7:02 p.m., the weather prediction center warned leftover bits of Tropical Storm Barry, near-record moisture and an unstable atmosphere meant any storms that formed could be self-sustaining, with a potential for rain rates of more than 3 inches an hour, and they could rain over the same area again and again. It stated: “Considerable flash flooding this evening is possible.”
A flurry of forecast updates continued.
At 1:14 a.m. on July 4, the weather service issued a “Flash Flood Warning” for central Kerr County and northwestern Bandera County. Almost simultaneously, water flow began increasing dramatically on the Guadalupe River at Hunt, Texas.
“This pleasing stream had a flow rate of 53 gallons per second at midnight on July 4,” said Nielsen-Gammon. At 3 a.m., it was flowing at 264 gallons per second. Between 3 a.m. and 3:30 am., the water flow jumped to 125,000 gallons per second. Within four hours of the initial rise, the river level jumped 21.8 feet and was flowing at 900,000 gallons per second.
Did weather service cuts have an impact?
President Donald Trump campaigned on cutting the federal bureaucracy and reducing the budget. His administration, including the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Governmental Efficiency, has been mission-focused on doing so.
The sweeping cuts left many federal offices short-staffed and demoralized, according to recent retirees.
Many remaining employees, including those who declined to speak on the record for fear of retribution, say employees still fear more jobs will be lost in a reduction in force. Federal agencies were required to prepare a plan for making further reductions, but a federal judge in California ruled in May that the job cuts could not move forward.
The weather service office in Austin/San Antonio oversees much of the Hill Country area where the flooding took place. Of the 26 staff positions in that office, six are vacant at the moment, including two senior members, said Victor Murphy, a recently retired National Weather Service meteorologist in Texas. One of those is the warning coordination meteorologist who oversees emergency warnings and working with local officials on communicating around such events.
The Austin office also is short two forecasters.
Did the cuts play any role in the recent tragedy? Murphy wondered out loud. “I don’t know … The fact is that the office had record flooding two days in a row.”
The San Angelo, Texas office is down four positions, including a staff forecaster, a lead hydrologist and its meteorologist in charge, said Tom Fahy, legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization.
Weather service forecasters often become “an easy target for people’s wrath,” when people are looking for someone to blame, Fahy said.
“The real blame is the Trump Administration budget cuts to NWS and FEMA that cut off coordination planning with local emergency management officials,” he said. “Even during Trump’s 1st term, NWS managers would plan, practice and train their combined teams for increased cooperation. All that ended when Trump was inaugurated in 2025.”
President Trump said July 6 that he doesn’t think the federal government needs to rehire weather service meteorologists in the wake of catastrophic Texas flooding.
“I would think not,” Trump told reporters when asked about rehiring weather forecasters, adding that flooding “happened in seconds. Nobody expected it.”
When asked if he would investigate whether the cuts left key vacancies in the weather service or emergency coordination, Trump said he “wouldn’t blame (former President Joe) Biden for it either. I would just say this is a 100-year catastrophe, and it’s just so horrible for all.”
Why is it so hard to know where rain will fall?
At a news conference on July 5, Nim Kidd, chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, said: “The original forecast that we received on Wednesday from the National Weather Service predicted 3 to 6 inches of rain in the Concho valley and 4 to 8 inches in the Hill Country.”
“The amount of rain that fell in this specific location was never in any of those forecasts,” Kidd said.
Rainfall estimates in these extreme rainfall events have fallen short before, frustrating emergency managers, forecasters and even members of Congress, who approved measures in 2021 and 2022 to improve rainfall modeling and estimates of maximum possible precipitation within any given time frame.
As the weather service looked at their computers on July 3, the models they use for forecasting thunderstorms wouldn’t come together with a consensus on where the greatest rain would fall, according to their discussions. Many showed the potential for extreme rainfall somewhere in central Texas, while others showed almost nothing happening, Nielsen-Gammon said. “Where it was going to develop would depend on the details of the individual thunderstorms that popped up.”
Pinpointing localized extreme rain remains “a very difficult challenge,” said Gerard. Any time you have this type of environment, there’s going to be a chance that local areas are going to get more rain than anticipated.”
Rainfall in a storm is “controlled by very small-scale processes that are happening within the storm,” said Gerard, now CEO of weather consulting company Balanced Weather. “We don’t have the resolution of modeling to be able to forecast that yet.”
The storms laboratory is working to develop higher resolution modeling, he said, but it’s on the chopping block in the president’s proposed budget.
Did weather service balloon launches play a role?
Weather balloon launches measure moisture up through the atmosphere to help predict how much is available for rain. The better the data, the better the outcome, said Murphy, the recently retired Texas meteorologist. “You find out from a sounding what’s up 20,000, 30,000 or 40,000 feet. The only way to measure that is with a balloon.”
However, staffing shortages at local weather service offices across the U.S. has forced the limiting or cancelation of numerous weather balloon launches. Of 11 locations in Texas and surrounding states that were launching in the early spring, only six of the sites now launch balloons on any given morning, Murphy said.
There was only one weather balloon launch within 200 miles of the flooded area, Nielsen-Gammon said.
However, that one weather balloon proved its worth, the experts said, providing essential information that helped weather service forecasters see the increased chances for rain.
Launched remotely from an automated site in Del Rio, Texas, Murphy said it’s “the only one of its kind in the region.”
But the federal cutbacks and rising number of climate disasters mean the public is likely to blame someone for every botched forecast and missed opportunity to warn ‒ whether deservedly or not.
On July 7, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the president and the National Weather Service’s performance.
“Blaming President Trump for these floods is a depraved lie and it serves no purpose during this time of national mourning,” Leavitt said. “The National Weather Service did its job.”
Contributing: Zac Anderson and Joey Garrison, USA TODAY
Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national correspondent for USA TODAY, writes about climate change, violent weather and other news. Reach her at dpulver@usatoday.com or @dinahvp on Bluesky or X or dinahvp.77 on Signal.
Texas
Camp Mystic, a century-old girls Christian summer camp deluged by Texas flood

Camp Mystic, a 99-year-old Christian summer camp for girls in Texas Hill Country, was hosting 750 children this week when catastrophic flooding struck the Guadalupe River early Friday, leaving at least 20 children missing.
Founded in 1926, Camp Mystic operates two sites along the river in Hunt, Texas. It has long billed itself as a place for girls to grow spiritually and “develop outstanding personal qualities and self-esteem,” according to its website.
Each summer, Mystic challenges its campers to “be a better person for being at Mystic,” and to “let Mystic bring out the best in them.” The camp’s website emphasizes life-long friendships and a “wholesome Christian atmosphere.”
The flash floods killed at least 24 people in Texas Hill Country. The identities of the deceased and missing have not yet been officially released, but dozens of families shared in local Facebook groups that they have received phone calls from safety officials saying their daughters had not yet been located.
Camp Mystic said in an email to parents of the roughly 750 campers that if they have not been contacted directly, their child is accounted for.
Dick and Tweety Eastland, the current owners, have been involved with Camp Mystic since 1974. The camp has remained in the same family for generations, dating back to the 1930s.
A video on the Camp Mystic website shows a sprawling campus by the river, with footage of girls playing in the water, rowing boats, riding horses and playing tennis.
The flash flooding began around 4 a.m. Friday after heavy overnight rain swelled the Guadalupe River. Water swept into Kerr County and surrounding areas with such speed that officials say they were unable to issue evacuation orders in time.
“This happened very quickly, over a very short period of time, that could not be predicted, even with the radar,” said Dalton Rice, city manager for Kerrville, the county seat. “This happened within less than a two-hour span.”
Bodies were reported to have been found in vehicles swept away from upstream areas.
The river had crested in Kerrville and Comfort by Friday evening, but downstream sections — including near Spring Branch — weren’t expected to peak until early Saturday. The National Weather Service projected a crest of 37.2 feet there, considered moderate flood stage.
Texas
Here’s what’s in Trump’s GOP megabill and how it will affect Texans
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Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
After months of intense back-and-forth negotiations, on-the-floor haggling and threats to tank the legislation, Republicans’ massive tax and spending bill is heading to President Donald Trump’s desk to become law.
The wide-ranging megabill is the vehicle for much of Trump’s domestic policy agenda for his second term in the White House, with major changes in health care, immigration and tax policy that are sure to touch nearly every American. Here are the major ways Texas will be affected.
ACA and Medicaid
Over 300,000 Texans could lose their health insurance once the Medicaid changes passed by Congress take effect in 2027.
Medicaid, a federal-state health insurance program for low-income and disabled people, insures over 4 million Texans. The federal government paid for nearly two-thirds of the program’s $57 billion costs in Texas during the 2023 fiscal year, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization. Using estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, KFF projects that Texas stands to lose 10% of its federal Medicaid funds over the next decade, or $39 billion.
The cuts could be particularly potent in the Rio Grande Valley, which has an outsized number of Medicaid recipients, and in rural areas, where hospitals rely on Medicaid payments. Texas already has the highest uninsured rate in the nation.
Beyond Medicaid, the bill makes it harder to enroll in coverage through Affordable Care Act marketplaces and allows for the expiration of Biden-era enhanced premium tax credits that lower out-of-pocket costs for people with ACA marketplace coverage. Because Texas is among the 10 states that have never expanded Medicaid under the ACA, its residents rely heavily on marketplace coverage and the soon-to-expire tax credits.
Taken together, KFF estimates that the megabill’s provisions will lead to 1.7 million Texans losing their coverage, adding to the nearly 5 million children and adults under 65 who currently lack health insurance.
The GOP megabill also imposes nationwide work requirements on Medicaid for the first time in the program’s history. Recipients between the ages of 19 and 64 — except for those with disabilities or with dependent children under 14 — will have to prove they are working or in school for 80 hours per month. In states that implemented work requirements under a program from Trump’s first term, enrollment dropped precipitously, including among people who were working or qualified for an exception but struggled to document it.
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Texas Health and Human Services will be responsible for designing and enforcing work requirements that comply with the new federal law.
Before the Senate passed the bill this week, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a floor speech that the work requirements would strengthen Medicaid for its intended recipients — children, the disabled and pregnant women.
“It’s not fair to the taxpayer to have them subsidize people sitting on the couch playing video games all day when they can contribute to their community and their family,” he said.
Texas Democrats have homed in on Medicaid cuts as the most devastating portion of the bill.
“You’re talking about a health care disaster that is going to take place — not just in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but in every major metropolitan area in the state,” said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth. “When you add that on top of the rural hospitals that are going to close and the smaller areas in Texas, it’s going to create a health care nightmare scenario.”
SNAP
The Republican bill also includes deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps.
But the size of Texas’ SNAP cut is up in the air, dependent on how often the state errs in over- or underpaying benefit recipients.
Under the bill, states will have to cover a portion of SNAP benefits — which are currently paid for by the federal government in full — based on the percentage of erroneous payments made. States with an error rate under 6% will not have to share the cost, while states above that will be on the hook for escalating costs tied to their error rate.
Texas logged an error rate of 8.3% in fiscal 2024 — meaning that, had the law been in place, the state would have been responsible for 10% of the cost of SNAP benefits, or $716 million per year, according to the North Texas Food Bank.
The SNAP benefit cut is scheduled to kick in in fiscal 2028, unless Texas’ error rate falls under 6 percent. States with the highest rates of over- or underpayments — anything above 13.3% can delay the onset of the cost sharing, a last-minute provision included to win the support of Sen. Lisa Murowski, R-Alaska
In addition, Texas will now need to pay for 75% of the administrative cost of running the SNAP program, up from the current 50% rate. Feeding Texas, the statewide network of food banks, estimates that the new arrangement will cost the state $89.5 million annually.
Republicans also tightened SNAP work requirements in the bill. Previously, recipients over age 52 and those with children under 18 in their house were exempted from having to meet such requirements. Now, able-bodied Texans between the ages of 52 and 65 and those with children over 14 must prove they are working at least 80 hours per month to qualify for benefits.
Immigration and the border
Among the top priorities for Texas members was securing money to reimburse the state for the billions it spent on immigration enforcement along the southern border under the Biden administration. That money is now poised to flow to Texas after making it into the bill’s final draft.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who spearheaded the state’s multibillion-dollar border security program known as Operation Lone Star, has been lobbying Trump and lawmakers for federal dollars since Biden left office in January.
Texas’ GOP delegation at first pushed congressional leaders to include $12 billion in reimbursements for states that spent money on border enforcement. Cornyn secured an additional $1.5 billion in the Senate version, upping the available grants to $13.5 billion. The rules for this pot of money ensure that Texas has the largest claim to the funds of any state.
Apart from these grants, GOP lawmakers gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement nearly $30 billion to revamp its workforce and equipment, with the goal of speeding the agency’s rate of deportations — a hallmark Trump campaign pledge.
The reconciliation bill also puts billions into new surveillance technology and construction of a wall along the southern border.
Clean energy
The bill rolled back several key provisions of former President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which created tax credits for clean energy projects to spur industry investment.
Those subsidies will be phased out under a provision that reserves the tax credits only for solar and wind projects that are up and running by the end of 2027. Projects that start construction within a year of the law’s enactment — including those that become operational post-2027 — also will remain eligible.
Several Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Austin, wanted to see the credits abolished immediately. Roy claimed that clean energy cannot reliably power Texas’ grid, as some energy generators, such as solar panels and wind turbines, can only produce electricity in favorable weather conditions. He also said the credits subsidize foreign manufacturers whose renewable energy products dominate the American market.
Clean energy advocates say any cuts are bound to hamper the Texas labor market, as workers on renewable projects could be fired as their employers’ tax incentives disappear. With Texans’ energy demand expected to skyrocket in the next decade, supporters say clean energy could quickly and cheaply fill in the gaps.
Tax cuts
The centerpiece of the Republican megabill is the extension of an array of income tax cuts from the 2017 tax-cut package Trump signed into law during his first term.
Set to expire at the end of the year, the cuts were permanently enshrined in the bill, allowing most Americans to continue benefiting.
Republicans on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee estimate that a family of four earning the median income in Texas — $75,780 — would have seen its tax bill rise by $1,550 if the 2017 cuts had expired and tax rates had reverted to their Obama-era levels.
Independent analyses of the bill have found that its benefits will mostly flow to the wealthy, while tax savings for the lowest earners will be largely offset by benefit cuts.
A state-by-state analysis by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, found that the top 1% of Texans — or those making over $806,800 — will see the biggest share of the tax cuts. Those top earners will save 3.4%, or an average of $114,680 per year, on their federal income tax due to the passage of the bill.
The richest Texans will receive a larger average tax cut than their top one percent counterparts in all but two other states, according to the ITEP analysis.
Though the bill’s tax-cut provisions largely focused on preserving existing cuts, Republicans also created a host of new temporary tax relief programs aimed at workers and seniors. Texans who work in roles that traditionally receive tips will get to claim a deduction of up to $25,000 — a priority of Sen. Ted Cruz — through 2028. Those earning overtime can deduct up to $12,500 through the same time period, with lesser deductions for high earners.
And seniors can add $6,000 to their standard deduction, also through the 2028 tax year.
Trump accounts
Born out of a late-night poker game last year, Cruz championed the idea of “Trump accounts,” a provision included in the bill that will seed $1,000 in a tax-deferred investment account for nearly every child born in America in 2025 and beyond. As each recipient ages into adulthood, family, friends and nonprofits will be able to contribute up to $5,000 annually. Once they reach 18, the beneficiaries will be able to access half the funds for limited purposes — such as educational expenses, starting a small business or placing a down payment on a home. They can withdraw the rest once they reach age 31.
To accrue wealth, the account will be pegged to a broad stock index that has yet to be determined. Assuming an average market growth of 7% per year, the accounts will be worth anywhere from $3,500 to $170,000 after 18 years, depending on yearly contribution amounts.
Children born between 2025 and 2028 will be automatically enrolled in the program via their parents’ tax returns as part of the initiative’s pilot program. It is set to cost about $3 billion a year.
Cruz views the new accounts as a way to sell the next generation of American children on the free-market system.
“It gives every kid some skin in the game,” he said in an interview with The Texas Tribune earlier this month.
Pell Grant program
The megabill narrowly avoided cuts to the Pell Grant that would have devastated nearly half a million Texas students who depend on the aid to pay for college.
The House initially proposed stricter requirements to qualify for the Pell Grant, which helps cover costs for low-income students and is the largest source of grant aid in Texas. Students would have had to take more college credits each semester to get the full award, and students who are enrolled less than half-time would have lost access to the aid entirely.
In the end, the Senate stripped those changes after college access advocates sounded alarms about the educational barriers they would have raised.
The bill does prevent students from qualifying for the Pell Grant if their college already covers the full cost of their tuition. That will affect so-called “promise” programs across Texas that provide aid after Pell dollars kick in.
Republicans on Capitol Hill also extended Pell Grants to short-term workforce training programs, which can last just eight to 15 weeks. Some GOP members tried to make unaccredited training programs eligible for the aid, but the proposal was quashed by the Senate parliamentarian.
Incentives for K-12 scholarships
The legislation also includes one of Cruz’s priorities: annual tax credits for people who donate to nonprofits that give scholarships to elementary and secondary school students — a framework supporters call “school choice” and that is similar to private school vouchers.
To comply with Senate parliamentary rules, Cruz’s original proposal was scaled back so it could pass the chamber with a simple majority rather than the typical 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.
Under the provision, donors will receive a tax break equal to the amount they give to K-12 scholarship-granting organizations, including those that help students pay to attend private schools. The credit will max out at $1,700 annually, down from an earlier cap of 10% of the donor’s income, and states will get to opt in, meaning Democratic-controlled states could decline to participate.
This caveat, which was added in Senate negotiations, almost certainly sets the stage for another round of political fights in states wary of incentivizing private school attendance with public dollars.
Despite the trepidation, Cruz touted the measure repeatedly, calling school choice the “civil rights issue of the 21st century.”
Moving the Space Shuttle Discovery
Another provision secured by Cornyn requires the NASA administrator to consider moving the Space Shuttle Discovery from its current home in Virginia to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
In 2010, the NASA Authorization Act mandated the four now-retired space shuttles be gifted to cities with ties to their orbital missions. None were allocated to Houston in what Cornyn called a political stunt by the Obama administration.
Given the city’s central role in space exploration and coordinating each of the shuttle flights, Cornyn called Houston “the cornerstone of our nation’s human space exploration program” and said it would right an “egregious wrong” to move the shuttle to Texas.
The senior Texas senator also secured an additional $10 billion in funding to support programs at the Houston space center and more money for the International Space Station and NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration program, known as Artemis.
Disclosure: Feeding Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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