The continuing federal shutdown means food benefits provided to 3.5 million Texans could be cut off in November, The Texas Tribune reported. Of those affected, nearly half are children.
“SNAP has funding available for benefits and operations through the month of October,” according to a letter written by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service to state agencies.
“However, if the current lapse in appropriations continues, there will be insufficient funds to pay full November SNAP benefits for approximately 42 million individuals across the nation.” More than $614 million is distributed monthly in Texas to recipients.
Currently, other assistance programs such as Medicaid and the Children Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, are not affected by the shutdown, which is in its fourth week.
Oil prices at lowest level since pandemic
Oil prices have dropped to their lowest level since early 2021, the Texas Standard reported. In an interview with Matt Smith, lead energy analyst at Kpler, he said strong supply is driving the drop per barrel to about $57.
Average gasoline prices in Texas stood at $2.79 a gallon in September, down 67 cents from two years ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Smith said U.S. oil production in July, the latest monthly statistic available, was at a record high. He predicted the low oil prices could slow domestic production by next year.
Fall enrollment sets record at Texas colleges and universities
More than 1.6 million students enrolled this fall at Texas colleges and universities — an all-time high, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board reported. The preliminary numbers cover all levels of higher education, both public and private, and represent a 4.7% increase from last fall.
“The record enrollment numbers will help the state’s continuing efforts to build a talent-strong Texas and an increasingly educated workforce,” said Commissioner of Higher Education Wynn Rosser. For the first time since the pandemic, enrollment numbers surpassed pre-pandemic numbers in each sector of higher education.
Judge tosses Texas book rating law
A Waco federal judge last week threw out a 2023 Texas law that required booksellers and publishers to rate their books based on sexual content and reference, kut.org reported. The ruling makes permanent a lower court’s temporary injunction that was later upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The firm representing the coalition of bookstores and publishers hailed the ruling as a “major First Amendment victory.”
“The READER Act would have imposed impossible obligations on booksellers and limited access to literature, including classic works, for students across Texas,” attorney Laura Lee Prather said in a statement.
HB 900 sought to restrict which books are available in school libraries. It also required booksellers to rate their own books. The bill’s author, state Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, posted on X that he was “deeply disappointed” by the judge’s decision. However, he said SB 412 passed in the last legislative session holds school personnel “accountable” for exposing a child to what he termed “harmful materials.”
Proposition would fund dementia prevention research
As early voting continues through Oct. 31, the Texas Medical Association is backing Proposition 14, which would provide $3 billion in funding over a 10-year period for research into preventing dementia. The proposal, if approved, would create the Dementia Prevention Research Institute of Texas.
Houston neurologist Reeta Achari, MD, who testified in favor of DPRIT’s creation on behalf of TMA, said Proposition 14 has the potential to make Texas a leader in dementia research, and thus “attract much-needed physicians and subject matter experts and innovators from across the world.” Alzheimer’s disease comprises 60-80% of dementia cases and is becoming a public health crisis, according to a report from the Texas Department of State Health Services. More than 450,000 Texans over the age of 65 are living with Alzheimer’s, the report states.
Opponents of the measure, according to a nonpartisan analysis by the Texas Legislative Council, fear it would create a new state bureaucracy without sufficient accountability and an open-ended financial risk for taxpayers.
Feds slash ACA enrollment program’s budget
With open enrollment set to begin for the Affordable Care Act, funding for a navigator program that helped 65,000 Texans enroll for health insurance has been slashed by 90%, The Tribune reported. As a result, nonprofits are seekyour ing other ways to fund their efforts to help uninsured Texans find health care.
The state received $17 million in navigator grants last year. Most of the nearly 4 million Texans covered by an ACA plan find coverage on their own.
However, navigators enrolled about 26,533 Texans and helped nearly 39,000 others obtain Medicaid.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid said the return on navigator investment was too low.
“Despite receiving $98 million in the 2024 plan year, Navigators only enrolled 92,000 consumers— just 0.6 percent of plan selections,” according to a CMS statement in February.
About 17% of all Texans are uninsured, the highest rate of all states.
Nearly one fourth of traffic deaths in oil and gas regions
The Texas Department of Transportation is urging drivers to be extra cautious when driving in one of the state’s five main energy regions — the Permian Basin, Eagle Ford Shale, Barnett Shale, Anadarko Basin and the Haynes ville /Bossier Shale. One in four of the state’s 1,023 traffic fatalities in 2024 occurred in those areas.
“Oil and gas production activity means large trucks and heavy machinery share the road with local traffic on rural roads and highways,” according to the news release. “Increased truck traffic can mean limited visibility for drivers and wear and tear on road surfaces, potentially creating hazards that are difficult to navigate and maneuver around.”
Nearly 79,000 traffic crashes occurred in those five regions.
Failure to control speed and driver inattention were the top two factors contributing to those crashes.
Gary Borders is a veteran awardwinning Texas journalist. He published a number of community newspapers in Texas during a 30year span, including in Longview, Fort Stockton, Nacogdoches, Lufkin and Cedar Park. Email: gborders@ texaspress. com
