Pine View School 2022 class president Zander Moricz had to get rather creative with his graduation speech this week to avoid censorship. Moricz is Pine View's first openly gay class president, and school officials swore that they would cut off his microphone if he mentioned being gay or any of his LGBTQ+ activism during his speech.

Moricz's creative solution was to talk about his struggles as someone with curly hair—he never mentioned being gay at all. It was clear to the audience that he wasn't really talking about his hair, however.

Moricz is the youngest plaintiff in a suit against Florida's so-called "Don't Say Gay Bill," officially called the "Parental Rights in Education" bill.

As such, school administration was aware of his activism and apparently decided that they needed to do everything they could to prevent him from using his platform as class president to speak out about politics.

Pine View School 2022 class president Zander Moricz had to get rather creative with his graduation speech this week to avoid censorship. Moricz is Pine View's first openly gay class president, and school officials swore that they would cut off his microphone if he mentioned being gay or any of his LGBTQ+ activism during his speech.

Moricz's creative solution was to talk about his struggles as someone with curly hair—he never mentioned being gay at all. It was clear to the audience that he wasn't really talking about his hair, however.

Moricz is the youngest plaintiff in a suit against Florida's so-called "Don't Say Gay Bill," officially called the "Parental Rights in Education" bill.

As such, school administration was aware of his activism and apparently decided that they needed to do everything they could to prevent him from using his platform as class president to speak out about politics.

eye-to-eye in a high school auditorium in the aftermath of one of the state’s worst gun violence tragedies.....

It got even more heated as Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, standing onstage behind Abbott, shouted at O’Rourke, “Sir, you’re out of line,” later calling him a “sick son of a (expletive).“

It was yet another public display of the hostility that has been brewing in Texas politics for the past six years, as Democrats make gains in the Texas Legislature and battles for statewide office, while the Republicans in power push further and more aggressively right on guns, abortion and gay rights.

Just in the last two years, Republicans in the Legislature have changed rules in the Texas Senate to squelch out already outnumbered Democratic resistance and wielded redistricting as a partisan tool to end careers of Democratic lawmakers......

That’s not the case this time. O’Rourke hammered Abbott earlier this year for the failures of the power grid during the 2021 winter storms that killed more than 700 people and left millions without electricity. O’Rourke went so far as to accuse Abbott of essentially accepting bribes from oil and gas company executives to assure he wouldn’t regulate them.

Now one of Abbott’s biggest donors is suing O’Rourke for libel and defamation. Kelcy Warren, chairman of the board at the gas pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners, filed suit against O’Rourke in San Saba County seeking more than $1 million in damages in a case filed in March.

eye-to-eye in a high school auditorium in the aftermath of one of the state’s worst gun violence tragedies.....

It got even more heated as Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, standing onstage behind Abbott, shouted at O’Rourke, “Sir, you’re out of line,” later calling him a “sick son of a (expletive).“

It was yet another public display of the hostility that has been brewing in Texas politics for the past six years, as Democrats make gains in the Texas Legislature and battles for statewide office, while the Republicans in power push further and more aggressively right on guns, abortion and gay rights.

Just in the last two years, Republicans in the Legislature have changed rules in the Texas Senate to squelch out already outnumbered Democratic resistance and wielded redistricting as a partisan tool to end careers of Democratic lawmakers......

That’s not the case this time. O’Rourke hammered Abbott earlier this year for the failures of the power grid during the 2021 winter storms that killed more than 700 people and left millions without electricity. O’Rourke went so far as to accuse Abbott of essentially accepting bribes from oil and gas company executives to assure he wouldn’t regulate them.

Now one of Abbott’s biggest donors is suing O’Rourke for libel and defamation. Kelcy Warren, chairman of the board at the gas pipeline company Energy Transfer Partners, filed suit against O’Rourke in San Saba County seeking more than $1 million in damages in a case filed in March.

President Joe Biden plans to visit Texas in the wake of the Uvalde elementary school massacre that left 21 dead, including 19 children.

“Jill and I will be traveling to Texas in the coming days to meet with the families and let them know we have a sense of their pain, and hopefully bring some little comfort to a community in shock, in grief and in trauma,” Biden said at an unrelated press conference Wednesday.

Tuesday’s events at Robb Elementary School marked the third deadliest school shooting in American history, only preceded by Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook. In Uvalde, a teenage gunman stormed past a school security guard before entering a fourth grade classroom armed with an AR-15 rifle.

“As a nation, I think we all must be there for them,” Biden said. “Everyone. And we must ask: When in God's name will we do what needs to be done to — if not completely stop — fundamentally change the amount of the carnage that goes on in this country?”

A White House spokesperson had no additional details about the trip as of Wednesday afternoon.

President Joe Biden plans to visit Texas in the wake of the Uvalde elementary school massacre that left 21 dead, including 19 children.

“Jill and I will be traveling to Texas in the coming days to meet with the families and let them know we have a sense of their pain, and hopefully bring some little comfort to a community in shock, in grief and in trauma,” Biden said at an unrelated press conference Wednesday.

Tuesday’s events at Robb Elementary School marked the third deadliest school shooting in American history, only preceded by Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook. In Uvalde, a teenage gunman stormed past a school security guard before entering a fourth grade classroom armed with an AR-15 rifle.

“As a nation, I think we all must be there for them,” Biden said. “Everyone. And we must ask: When in God's name will we do what needs to be done to — if not completely stop — fundamentally change the amount of the carnage that goes on in this country?”

A White House spokesperson had no additional details about the trip as of Wednesday afternoon.

Less than 24 hours after Attorney General Ken Paxton clinched the Republican nomination for his re-election, the Texas State Bar sued him Wednesday over his “dishonest” attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

The short, four-page lawsuit, filed in district court in Paxton’s hometown of Collin County, contains identical claims to those in litigation filed earlier this month against Paxton’s top deputy, First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster. Paxton violated the bar’s rules of professional conduct by including false and misleading statements, according to the association.

“His allegations were not supported by any charge, indictment, judicial finding, and/or credible or admissible evidence, and failed to disclose to the Court that some of his representations and allegations had already been adjudicated and/or dismissed in a court of law,” the suit reads, referring to a number of voter fraud claims that had already been debunked at the time Paxton filed his petition......

“It’s a very strong complaint by the bar,” said Jim Harrington, a Texas lawyer who co-signed Ratner’s complaint and who founded the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for voting rights. “I think they hit the nail on the head, and hopefully we’ll see justice as a result of that.”