Hope Ngumezi never imagined he would be a single father. 

When he met his late wife Porsha at Lamar University in Beaumont, Ngumezi was instantly enamored of her energy, drive, and compassion. Both Ngumezi and Porsha came from large families and were eager to start their own. After getting married in their late 20s, they happily welcomed two sons, ages 3 and 5 at the time. Porsha got pregnant again in early 2023, this time with a girl.

But, rather than welcoming a daughter into their home, Ngumezi was forced to bury his wife. 

At 11 weeks into her pregnancy, Porsha, 35, began to miscarry and bleed excessively, passing large clots “the size of a grapefruit,” as previously reported by ProPublica. When rushed to the hospital, she needed an emergency dilation and curettage (D&C)— a procedure that gently suctions the uterus. D&Cs can be life-saving, and they can also be used for first-trimester abortion care. Instead of the needed procedure, doctors offered Porsha misoprostol. The medication, which softens the cervix and helps contract the uterus, is considered less risky for fearful doctors facing up to life in prison for violating Texas’ criminal abortion ban, yet it’s far less effective at stopping hemorrhage. Just hours later, Porsha was dead.

“My wife should still be here. Her death was preventable,” Ngumezi, now 39, told the Texas Observer in February. “This law came and disrupted the medical system and took my college sweetheart away from me. Now my boys are forced to live without a mother.”

Since Porsha’s death, the Houston-area airline engineer has sought to turn his grief into activism, sharing his story far and wide with the goal of preventing another tragedy. His mission feels cathartic, and it serves as a way to honor his late wife. 

But Ngumezi said the pain of losing Porsha has been “retriggered” since he learned in 2024 that a state health committee tasked with reviewing cases of women who died during pregnancy or childbirth would skip analyzing data from 2022 and 2023—the two years including and following the fall of Roe v. Wade at the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court and the enforcement of the state’s criminal abortion ban. The year 2022 also marks the first full year after Texas passed Senate Bill 8, the state’s earlier ban that relied on civil litigation for enforcement and took effect the prior fall. The committee’s decision meant it would not investigate Porsha’s death. 

Instead, the forthcoming report of the Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee (MMRC), due September 1, will leapfrog those pivotal years and focus on cases from 2024, leaving those eager to assess the immediate impact of the state’s abortion bans frustrated. The 23-member committee is composed largely of physicians in various fields as well as nurses, health researchers, and two community roles. The members are appointed by the head of the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS), who is in turn appointed by the leader of the state’s Health and Human Services Department, a position chosen by Republican Governor Greg Abbott. Dr. Jennifer Shuford, who led DSHS starting in late 2022, was appointed by President Trump in April to serve as deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an interim commissioner now holds the DSHS role. The MMRC issues biannual reports that offer recommendations to the Texas Legislature about how to reduce maternal deaths through policy, but, as the 2027 session looms, they’ll do so based on a partial picture.

“I feel embarrassed and ashamed that our state isn’t doing what it should to investigate these deaths,” said Hope. “How are they going to meaningfully find a solution? They are not holding themselves accountable. … It triggers memories of how those in charge didn’t really care about my wife or her life.”

In November 2024, Hope Ngumezi holds a picture of him and his wife at his Houston home. (Danielle Villasana)

The committee’s most recent report, released in 2024, showed a surge in maternal deaths in 2020 and 2021, even while excluding deaths related to COVID-19, marking the highest rate since the MMRC started examining these cases in 2014. In 2021, the rate was nearly 38 deaths per 100,000 live births—and 27.7 the year prior——compared with 17.2 in 2019. Texas had a higher maternal death rate than the national average in both 2020 and 2021, and, more recently, it still has a higher rate than the national figure. 

The overwhelming majority of maternal deaths in Texas, around 80 percent, were preventable, the MMRC found in 2024. Infections were reported to be the most common cause, followed by conditions including cardiovascular problems, obstetric hemorrhage, and embolisms. And Black women, like Porsha, continue to be disproportionately affected; they are 2.5 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. In its last report, the MMRC found that Black women’s mortality from 2019 to 2020 jumped by 11 points, to 39 deaths per 100,000 live births, and for Hispanic women by 13 points, reaching 22.2 per 100,000.

“Black women carry the greatest burden when it comes to barriers to abortion rights and to maternal deaths,” said Marsha Jones, a longtime Texas reproductive justice advocate who is now with the Dallas-based Women’s Health and Evolutionary Wellness Project. “So it’s a slap in the face to all Black women for the state to choose not to evaluate the impact of what happened right after Dobbs. It’s totally irresponsible.” 

Jones continued: “I believe this was absolutely a politically influenced decision.”

Since Texas barred abortion care in late 2021, a series of harrowing stories of women who have died, or faced the brink of death, has ensued. These include Texas women Josseli Barnica, a 28-year-old mother who died after doctors told her it would be a “crime” to intervene in her miscarriage; Nevaeh Crain, a teenager who died despite three separate emergency room visits to seek care; and Tierra Walker, who died of preeclampsia after not being able to access abortion. Nearly two dozen women who were denied abortion care, resulting in traumatic health complications for some, sued the State of Texas in 2023 to clarify the ban’s vague emergency care provision. (Ultimately, the state prevailed.) The tragic stories underscore how the abortion bans have pitted Texas doctors’ medical ethics against punitive state laws that could land them in prison for life, forcing them to delay or deny sometimes life-saving care. 

While Republican lawmakers (who themselves authored the abortion ban legislation) have belatedly sought to clarify when doctors can save lives, namely through last year’s Senate Bill 31, and the Texas Medical Board, after years of silence, this year issued training for doctors on how to provide pregnancy termination if the life of the mother is at risk, reproductive rights health experts and advocates stress that many of these efforts fall far short of solving the problem. 

During public hearings in 2024, Dr. Carla Ortique, a Houston OB-GYN who chairs the MMRC, defended the committee’s decision not to review maternal deaths during the crucial post-ban years, saying there was “no nefarious intent” or political motivation behind the decision. She said the move was simply meant to keep the focus on more recent cases and, she believes, women in the subsequent years likely face comparable impacts.

“There was no input from the executive or any other branch of our state government regarding our plans for cohort review,” she said. “It is imperative that we become more contemporary in our review process.” 

After discussing media coverage revealing potential political interference with the MMRC, Ortique reminded her fellow members that “regardless of personal beliefs and opinions,” they’d vowed to “protect the integrity” of the work and the “[state] agency that supports” the work—and that they were all bound by signed confidentiality agreements.

“They are not even trying to hide the fact they want to conceal these deaths anymore.”

Nevertheless, the committee has faced backlash from medical professionals, advocates, and politicians for its choice to seemingly evade the immediate post-Roe fallout, with many believing politics played a role, at least tacitly. 

“It does absolutely make me suspicious,” Austin Democratic state Representative Donna Howard, who serves as chair of the Texas Women’s Health Caucus, told the Observer. “It’s clear from media reporting there have been deaths directly related to the abortion law in those two years, and yet these deaths are not going to be reviewed? I have my doubts about why and how this choice was made.” 

Howard casts a skeptical eye on the claim that the committee is forgoing those two years simply to stay current. Responding to criticism that the MMRC has historically lagged behind in its data collection, Howard authored and passed a law during the 2025 legislative session to help speed up the process. House Bill 713 allows nurses reviewing maternal health documents to examine unredacted data, saving hundreds of hours of work and months of delays. 

“I was trying to remove one of the MMRC’s biggest stumbling blocks,” said Howard. “We passed it, and it put in place an opportunity to expedite the review, which should have helped.” 

Other attempts to accelerate data collection stalled, including a measure from Houston Democratic Representative Armando Walle that sought to require the committee to annually review cases from the previous year, rather than reviewing cases every two years as it does now. Walle, who helped author the 2013 law that created the MMRC, told the Observer his “original intent” was not to place any limits on what years the committee would review. He has urged the MMRC to analyze the two years they’ve decided to gloss over, calling the move “short sighted.”

Walle added, “I can’t say why for sure, but I certainly suspect I know why they are not reviewing those years.”

Nakeenya Wilson, a former member of the MMRC, has testified before the committee to express her reservations about the decision. Wilson doesn’t believe the committee is necessarily at fault; rather, members may have received pressure from Republican lawmakers or state officials that stand to benefit from concealing the consequences of their anti-abortion laws. 

“I understand that the committee says they want to be contemporary and catch up with the data, but it’s very concerning that they happen to be skipping over the two most significant years of reproductive health in the state and nation’s history,” she told the Observer. “It’s clear to me that somebody has an agenda here.”

In response to an Observer request for comment, DSHS echoed the MMRC’s stated reasoning. “The purpose is to make sure reviews are more contemporaneous, which will help support the committee’s recommendations on addressing maternal health,” said agency spokesperson Lara Anton. 

DSHS says it will make the raw data for the overlooked two years available on its website even if it doesn’t review individual case records. However, without the deeper analysis, those numbers won’t have much meaning, argued Howard. 

“I’m glad to at least have the numbers, but that’s all they’re going to be—just numbers, not the critical information and review we need as lawmakers to ensure moms stop dying in this state,” she said.

This isn’t the first time a decision to withhold Texas maternal mortality data has come under fire for possibly being politically motivated. In 2022, then-commissioner of DSHS John Hellerstedt—just three months after the overturning of Roe—announced that the MMRC’s report, slated to be out that September, would be delayed until the following summer purportedly due to “incomplete 2019 data.” (Hellerstedt retired soon after the announcement.) 

At the time, maternal health advocates criticized the move as politically “strategic,” as the report would now coincidently be released after the midterm elections. Ultimately, the report came out that December, after the election but prior to the Texas legislative session. 

Wilson, who served on the MMRC at the time of the delay, was vocal about what she considered data suppression, calling it tantamount to “dishonorably burying” the women who died and championing its timely release. 

She eventually found herself pushed out of the committee. Having nearly lost her own life while giving birth, Wilson sat on the MMRC as an outspoken advocate and voice for other women of color who experienced similar birth and pregnancy trauma. When a 2023 law eliminated her “community advocate” position, she applied for a different role on the MMRC but did not get the job. Instead, the head of DSHS appointed Ingrid Skop, a leading U.S. anti-abortion activist, as a “rural community” member, despite the fact the OB-GYN is based in San Antonio. Among her extremist views, Skop believes abortion bans do not lead to an increase in maternal deaths and in fact may actually help reduce those rates.

“I think the appointment of [Skop], who has been fighting abortion access, including abortion pills, which research shows are safe and effective, raises questions about whether the Texas MMRC might be a target for political interference,” Pilar Herrero, senior attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Observer. 

As abortion restrictions proliferate across the United States, maternal mortality committees in Republican-led states have seen a trend of possible political intrusion. In 2024, following investigative reports that showed a connection between the deaths of two women and the state’s abortion ban, Georgia officials dismissed all 32 members of their maternal mortality review committee. Idaho quietly disbanded its committee in 2023 after conservative groups pushed back on the committee’s calls to help save the lives of new moms by expanding post-partum Medicaid coverage. When Arkansas’ committee similarly recommended extending Medicaid, Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders created her own maternal advisory group, and Florida’s committee went dark as the state restricted abortion. 

MMRCs are relatively new, established over the past decade, after the revelation in the early 2010s that the United States suffers from one of the highest maternal death rates in the world compared to other similarly developed countries. Nearly all U.S. states today have a committee responsible for tracking pregnancy-related deaths and offering recommendations for prevention. Herrero, who served on an MMRC in New York from 2020 to 2024, worries about the future of the committees, whose work is now becoming even more essential amid the deadly consequences of abortion bans. 

“I’m deeply concerned about the levels of suspicion and mistrust around MMRCs,” she said. “As our politics have gotten increasingly hostile around reproductive health, I think these committees are getting caught up in that.”

Ngumezi serves juice to his two children at home in November 2024. (Danielle Villasana)

Walle, who was motivated by a startling rise in Black mothers dying in Harris County, recalled the “uphill” battle it took for Democrats to pass the statute that would create the MMRC in 2013; in fact, the first attempt during the 2011 legislative session floundered.

“It was a struggle to get over the finish line,” said Walle, who authored the original House version of the bill. “We had to make compromises because we were up against the [Republican] pushback to expanding government.”

One of the major compromises lawmakers acquiesced to was agreeing to Sunset review—a process that determines whether government agencies can continue operating—in 2019. Democrats have succeeded so far in averting its potential demise, yet the committee is once again facing Sunset next legislative session. Walle intends to fight for its survival, but the MMRC’s future remains uncertain.

With the MMRC lagging in its analysis of post-Roe fallout, the work has fallen to academics and investigative reporters. Suzanne Bell and her fellow researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have estimated that in states that implemented a full or six-week abortion ban the number of pregnancy-associated deaths was 9.2 percent higher than expected through the end of 2023, according to their study in the American Journal of Public Health. As the first state to ban abortion care, months prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling, and as the most populous banned state, researchers knew Texas would have an outsized influence on their study, so they analyzed it individually. Their results suggest that Texas’ pregnancy-related deaths possibly rose by 13.5 percent and maternal mortality may have increased by 8.4 percent.

“We’re seeing real harms of these bans on population health,” Bell told the Observer. “Our work suggests many preventable deaths have occurred in states that banned abortion, like Texas. … We should be working to improve and reinforce our [maternal mortality] review committees and their ability to review all the data—not doing the exact opposite.”

Meanwhile, news outlets including ProPublica have taken it upon themselves to do the analysis that’s lacking from the state, finding that sepsis rates during second-trimester pregnancy-loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50 percent after Texas’ earlier ban went into effect in 2021 and that the number of blood transfusions during emergency room visits for first-trimester miscarriage shot up by 54 percent following the state’s criminal ban in 2022. The number of emergency room visits during first-trimester miscarriage also rose by 25 percent, suggesting delays in care. 

Kaitlyn Kash knows the dangers of Texas abortion laws first hand. The Austin mother has suffered multiple complications while pregnant that were made more harrowing, and nearly deadly, due to the restrictions. 

During a routine 13-week ultrasound in October 2021, she discovered her baby had severe skeletal dysplasia, a genetic condition in which bones become brittle and easily break. Her child, whose ribs were not strong nor large enough to support lung function, was unlikely to survive birth. 

While Kash asked about pregnancy termination, doctors—a month after the state’s six-week ban took effect—recommended she “seek a second opinion from outside Texas” and said there was not much else they could do. 

“I thought to myself, ‘Wow they feel like they can’t even mention the word abortion, they can’t even talk about it directly,’” Kash, who was eventually able to travel to a clinic in Kansas for care, told the Observer. A few months later, she became pregnant again but started to miscarry at seven weeks. Her doctors prescribed her misoprostol, but Kash struggled to find a pharmacy willing to fill the prescription. 

By 2023, Kash gave birth to a daughter, but she needed a D&C procedure to remove placenta stuck in her uterus. Kash began throwing up, shaking uncontrollably, and bleeding profusely. She was on the cusp of hemorrhagic shock, and doctors needed to act fast or she would die. Yet they had difficulty finding the equipment and stalled in operating on her as she drifted in and out of consciousness. Every minute that passed was “terrifying” to Kash and her husband. 

“My life was in danger. I thought I was going to die,” Kash said. “When I woke up, I couldn’t get answers on what had gone wrong or why it took so long to act. It was a social worker at the hospital who later revealed to me ‘Oh, we don’t do those anymore’ about D&Cs. And I could tell the minute she said it, she realized she shouldn’t have.”

Of the MMRC’s decision to forgo reviewing post-Roe maternal deaths, Kash said it’s a “blatant” attempt to censor information about the impact of abortion bans. She suggested committee members may be walking a “tight rope” hemmed in by not just DSHS but the state-funded health institutions they work in professionally. 

“They are not even trying to hide the fact they want to conceal these deaths anymore,” she said. “I believe the members of that committee want to do better but they can’t. I think their hands are tied by state officials who decide what they can and can’t review.”

Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and state Senator Bryan Hughes—who authored the 2021 ban—did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

In December 2023, Kash colors with her son at home in Austin. (AP Photo/Stephen Spillman)

Herrero pointed out that cases like Kash’s are an important part of solving the crisis yet are likely not being reviewed. “We know that for every person that dies from pregnancy-related complications there are many, many more people who experience very serious, life-threatening events,” she said. “If the committee were more well-resourced, they could study cases like this.” 

What’s also troubling for women’s health advocates is the fact that the MMRC does not count abortion-related deaths—meaning cases in which abortion was the cause of death (typically self-managed, since physician-managed abortion is extremely safe)—a revelation committee members say they only discovered in 2024 after more than a decade. The 2013 Texas statute that created the MMRC includes a provision that excludes such cases from review. “This chapter does not apply to disclosure of records pertaining to voluntary or therapeutic termination of pregnancy, and those records may not be collected, maintained, or disclosed under this chapter,” it reads. 

“This is something we didn’t really understand until recently,” committee member and maternal health researcher Amy Raines-Milenkov told the Observer. “So we don’t really know if someone died after self-managing an abortion because they couldn’t get care. … Until that section is removed from the law, we won’t know.”

Walle said the environment has changed since legislators originally crafted the statute more than a decade ago. He and others are now working with experts and advocates to expand the law to take into account these deaths, while respecting patient privacy.

“It’s a different conversation now,” said Walle. “Access to care has changed after the Texas GOP banned abortion and criminalized doctors. Women are entitled to all the information they need to have healthy and safe pregnancies. And it is our moral obligation to protect the mothers who bring life into this world.”

Editor’s Note: This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The post Texas Maternal Mortality Committee’s Next Report Will Skip Post-‘Roe’ Deaths. Lawmakers Suspect Political Influence. appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The People of La Junta for Preservation, a nonprofit founded in 2024 that works to preserve Indigenous sites, and two Indigenous worshippers of Lipan Apache lineage are suing the federal government to stop the highly contentious border barrier construction and surveying activities in Big Bend, the Texas Observer has learned. 

The plaintiffs argue that ongoing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) construction and surveying activities in Big Bend National Park and across far West Texas have cut them off both from specific sacred sites and ecosystems fundamental to their spiritual practices in violation of Religious Freedom Restoration Act and American Indian Religious Freedom Act protections. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in San Antonio, not only seeks an immediate halt to construction activity in Big Bend National Park but across CBP’s Big Bend Sector.

The lawsuit argues that “the threatened areas include places used by [plaintiff Christina Hernandez] or members of her community for religious observance, ceremony, prayer, gathering, or other traditional religious practices” and “the challenged construction also threatens to substantially burden the exercise of religion by physically altering, restricting access to, or destroying the places at which those practices occur.”

Democratic Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez, who is also a San Antonio-based lawyer, is representing the plaintiffs in the case. His state Senate district includes a portion of Big Bend National Park and Brewster County. The prominent Houston lawyer Dick DeGuerin is also on the case. 

The lawsuit names the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CBP, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, and Big Bend Sector Border Patrol Chief Patrol Agent Lloyd M. Easterling among the defendants. 

(Natalie Newman)

Hernandez is director of People of La Junta and is also a member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas and a lead plaintiff in the suit. “We use the river for coming-of-age ceremonies that we are reintroducing into the community, and then we also harvest sacred plant material—willows, cattail pollen—and that all we get specifically from the banks of the river, versus sourcing elsewhere, because we feel like that’s the the closest to our creator,” Hernandez told the Observer. “That water is used in a multitude of ways within ceremony, whether it’s opening up a ceremony at large, or being put in the water to be close to our Creator.”

Moreover, harvested willow is used in the construction of sweat lodges fundamental to Indigenous ceremonies held all along the river, Hernandez told the Observer. Another plaintiff, Andrew Austin, also of Lipan Apache lineage, participates in religious observances in the Big Bend region including traditional Indigenous song, dance, and prayer, according to the lawsuit.

But it’s not just that the plaintiffs incorporate the land and river into their spiritual ceremonies—they consider the land and river to be living beings and relatives in their own right, and that acknowledgment is at the center of how they worship and recognize divinity. These sacred spaces’ specific histories and remains—including human burial sites—also tie the plaintiffs back to their ancestors, the ceremonial recognition of which is another key pillar in Indigenous spiritual practice. New construction of border barriers threatens to cut them off from religious funeral practices and gravesite visitation and prayer.

Among the sacred and historic cultural sites People of La Junta are seeking to protect include the group’s 31-acre, riverfront parcel of land that it owns in Redford, a tiny outpost in Presidio County. A 4-acre portion of that land was designated as a State Archeological Landmark by the Texas Historical Commission in 1984, according to documents reviewed by the Observer. 

The Polvo archeological site features ancient burn pits, surface-level pottery shards and fragments of adobe buildings—the remains of 800-year-old Indigenous villages of La Junta de los Rios along the Rio Grande. It also includes the cornerstones and foundation of the 16th-century San Pedro de Alcántara de los Tapacolmes Spanish mission. The Polvo site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

“Presidio is one of the oldest continuously cultivated lands in North America. So Indigenous people have been there pre-contact for thousands of years, and I have DNA matched to ancestors that we have repatriated from museums and private collections and educational institutions that date back to the 12th century,” Hernandez told the Observer. 

The legal challenge comes as Southwest Valley Constructors, awarded a $1.7 billion CBP contract, began bulldozing sensitive ecological areas near Santa Elena Canyon August 6 to clear the way for a series of border barriers, surveillance systems, and patrol roads—part of a new $46.5 billion package of new wall funding appropriated by Congress under the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

CBP has publicly denied the agency is planning to construct 30-foot-high steel bollards in Big Bend National Park, saying it intends to clear areas for surveillance towers and patrol roads instead. Southwest Valley bulldozers have nevertheless moved into an area near the park’s Cottonwood Campground and have begun clearing vegetation, according to on-the-ground reports. Initially telling Marfa Public Radio that contractors were grading storm-damaged roads, CBP has since told SFGate that they are taking soil samples to inform engineering plans. 

“What people are seeing right now is survey and design work—NOT construction of a wall through the park,” CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said in a statement issued to the Observer. “We are working to preserve the landscape and protect the access visitors and local businesses depend on.”

The plaintiffs are undertaking the novel religious freedom legal strategy to both ensure the continuation of First Amendment-protected religious practices tied to the land and their ancestral histories and to get around the DHS’ waiving of at least 28 federal environmental and cultural heritage protection laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Antiquities Act, and the 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act.

Moreover, the suit directly challenges the DHS waivers within the bounds of Big Bend National Park, arguing that DHS did not waive the statutory provision that establishes the administration of national park land by the Department of Interior. Thus, it argues DHS doesn’t have the jurisdiction to construct on, or issue waivers for, national park land. 

“We haven’t seen the [religious freedom] argument used to date in another case,” state Senator Gutierrez told the Observer. “We are faced with a situation that not only [is DHS] waiving every law under the sun, but they’re waiving the things that are actually sacred to the religion in and of itself. For instance, if you’re waiving the Clean Air Act, or the Clean Water Act, or the Antiquities Act, you’re actually going after … what this religion and its artifacts, and its antiquities, and its church are truly about.”

Another plaintiff named in the suit, the Far Flung Outdoor Center in Terlingua, argues that its business providing parkgoers with guided river trips and other outdoor recreational services will be irrevocably harmed by the construction of border barriers.

This is just the latest in a string of legal actions seeking to prevent the federal government’s aims to disrupt the pristine wilderness of the Big Bend for border security projects, and it comes amid growing bipartisan backlash to the plans. 

(Natalie Newman)

In April, the Center for Biological Diversity filed suit against the Trump administration over the DHS waivers. The suit, filed in federal court in El Paso, argues DHS must get Congress’ approval to waive federal environmental and cultural heritage protections due to the enormous political and economic impacts border barrier construction will have on the region. The Center also filed a separate April suit against CBP for withholding public records related to border barrier construction. 

In June, the Tohono O’odham tribe in Arizona filed for a federal injunction in Washington, D.C., against a portion of proposed border wall that would cut through their reservation, arguing that the Trump administration is undercutting the tribal nation’s sovereignty. That case remains ongoing, and a final judgement from a Bush-appointee Judge Richard Leon is expected in a few weeks, according to the New Republic. 

Still, a federal judge sided with the Trump administration early this month in another West Texas case, ruling that DHS could construct steel bollards across the far West Texas town of Presidio’s levee system. A coalition of landowners in that area is planning to sue as well. 

The post Indigenous Group Sues to Stop Big Bend Border Wall on Religious Grounds appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The State of Texas’s latest takeovers of four school districts, including Fort Worth, Beaumont, Lake Worth, and Connally Independent School Districts (ISDs) have already had a direct cost to local taxpayers. All four districts were forced to negotiate settlements with superintendents ousted by the Texas Education Agency (TEA), in packages totalling more than $1 million. 

Texas is at the forefront of public school takeovers nationwide, assuming control of districts even when just one school repeatedly fails to meet state standards. Since 2020, the TEA has installed its own leaders at eight school districts, including Houston ISD, the state’s largest. In addition to the four takeovers initiated this year, 10 more districts are potentially at risk, including Austin ISD. Multiple districts now undergoing takeovers already have projected budget shortfalls and have been forced to close schools.

But the state does not provide any additional funding for struggling districts under takeovers—nor does it cover costs to install the state’s chosen administrators or to remove leaders whose contracts contained penalties for early termination. As part of negotiations to terminate superintendents’ contracts, districts are often forced to pay as much as a year’s salary to leaders forced out by the state, generally paying double salaries—for both the outgoing and incoming superintendents. 

Beaumont (Shutterstock)

In the case of Beaumont ISD, the state ousted a seasoned superintendent and replaced her with one who had no prior experience in that role. 

Beaumont has faced two state takeovers in the past decade and has had to buy out the contracts of two different superintendents who were replaced by TEA. The district of 15,800 students ended up with more failing schools after its first state takeover, which was prompted by financial issues, as the Texas Observer previously reported. 

The superintendent who was recently replaced, Shannon Allen, took over seven years ago during the prior state takeover. TEA negotiated a voluntary retirement agreement with Allen on behalf of the Texas school district that was approved by the state-selected board of managers in July. The agreement, an unsigned copy of which the Observer obtained through an open records request, states that Allen “shall be paid her full salary and benefits pursuant to the terms of [her superintendent] Contract” through January 31, 2027, as an “advisor emeritus” and states that she will receive a $245,195 settlement payment, along with payment for dozens of days of unused leave. Allen confirmed via email that the agreement provides both her prior salary through January and the lump sum payment.

The state-chosen replacement, Sandi Massey, is making a higher salary—$299,250, according to a 4-year contract the district provided the Observer. Massey has no prior experience as a superintendent; she previously worked at Houston ISD as a leader under its ongoing state takeover.

“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Thomas P. Sigee, the former president of the elected Beaumont board of trustees that was replaced as part of the second takeover. “Now we have a new superintendent who is not certified [as a superintendent]. She does not have the qualifications that our former superintendent had.”

Sigee argues that if the state is going to force leadership change, it should at least cover the upfront administrative costs. “Since they are making this decision, and not anyone else … I think they should be prepared to put money in it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Fort Worth ISD, Texas’ tenth largest district with more than 67,000 students, will pay ex-superintendent Karen Molinar a full year’s salary and benefits, including 20 unused vacation days and 15 personal leave days, according to a separation agreement negotiated between the state-appointed board of managers and Molinar. That’s worth more than $430,000, according to TEA salary data. The unexpected bill arrives at a time when the district plans to close 19 schools through 2029 to address a growing budget deficit and declining enrollment. Molinar declined to comment.

“This money is coming out of money that could be used on students in instructional matters,” said Steven Nelson, an associate professor of education policy and leadership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “Four-hundred thousand could be used to hire more teachers. It could be used to hire additional support staff in the classroom or instructional programming.”

The new state-imposed Fort Worth superintendent, Peter Licata, a former superintendent in Florida will receive a base salary of $360,000 plus other benefits and the potential for incentive pay, according to a 4-year contract the district provided to the Observer. 

Parent organizer Zach Leonard told the Observer he worries about other costs to students: The district already has had four different superintendents in the past decade (counting the state’s latest pick). “That kind of turnover and the cost that comes with it falls on students and teachers,” Leonard said.  

In the separation agreement that TEA negotiated for Connally ISD, which serves 2,000 students in Central Texas, the district will continue to pay a salary to its former superintendent, Jill Bottelberghe, as “superintendent emeritus” until the end of January 2027 and then make another payment of $82,000.  Bottelberghe, who was superintendent in Connally for three years, made an annual base salary of $187,000. Bottelberghe did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The TEA’s pick for Connally, Josie Gutierrez, who also has no previous experience as a superintendent though she had different administrative roles at nearby Waco ISD, is making a higher salary: $195,000 a year as superintendent. The takeover has already led to turnover in about 100 positions, including teachers and principals. 

Finally, Lake Worth ISD, a North Texas district with 3,100 students, has paid its former superintendent Mark Ramirez $264,665 in severance due to its state takeover, according to data provided by the district and a separation agreement approved by the state-appointed board of managers. The negotiations were based on terms in Ramirez’s contract. According to TEA records as of October 2025, Ramirez’s total annual salary was nearly $242,000. Ramirez, who was recruited less than a year prior to the takeover from a district in Florida to help leaders turn around the district, did not respond to a request for comment.

The new Lake Worth superintendent, Ena Meyers, initially appointed in April, also has no prior experience as a superintendent, but she previously worked at Houston ISD as part of the administration chosen during its ongoing state takeover. Lake Worth’s state-imposed board of managers recently projected a $1.4 million budget shortfall for the 2026-27 school year and ordered a reduction in force. A Lake Worth ISD spokesperson did not respond to a request to confirm Meyers’ salary.

Meyers, like Massey, TEA’s appointee for Beaumont ISD, previously worked for a Colorado-based charter network Third Future Schools, which was founded and led until 2023 by state-imposed Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles.

At a recent community meeting, Mary Wilson Coker, an elected Lake Worth ISD trustee, asked TEA officials whether the district would be responsible for paying the costs of the takeover, including the ex-superintendent’s separation agreement and other expenses. TEA affirmed that the district would foot those bills. “If the state’s going to take over, it would be nice if they could help offset some of the costs of them taking over,” Coker said, according to the Fort Worth Report.

TEA also has appointed and required districts to pay conservators who monitor district operations for the state. Beaumont, Fort Worth, and other districts subject to recent takeovers have been required to pay $250 an hour plus $50 an hour for travel for the TEA-appointed conservators. Fort Worth attempted to fend off its takeover but was overruled by an administrative law judge—so that district also had to cover legal fees.

Past takeovers have further resulted in other costs that districts must absorb, said Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation for Teachers union. “The buyout of the superintendent is a big number … But it [is] almost dwarf[ed] in comparison [by] the cost of onboarding and bringing on so many new people. During the Houston takeover, we’ve seen close to 25,000 employees that have left the school district.” Capo said that recruiting and training each new employee costs thousands more.

A 2023 protest against the takeover of Houston ISD (Josephine Lee)

Yet in each case, TEA defends the costly changes as required under state law, and claims it has always “conducted a national search and interviewed [superintendent] candidates with a strong track record of improving outcomes for students in prior school system leadership roles.”

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath has repeatedly defended leadership changes as needed to help students improve their test scores. “Today’s appointments reflect our commitment to ensuring that every student in Connally ISD has access to the education they deserve,” said Morath, when announcing changes that took effect there in May. 

Under prior takeovers, some state-selected superintendents, like Mike Miles in Houston ISD, have argued that they can save districts money by rooting out “inefficiencies” in operations, which could offset some costs, though critics say such savings have come at the expense of experienced teachers and quality education. 

A TEA spokesperson did not respond to the Observer’s questions for this story.

Domingo Morel, an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University who has studied state takeovers for more than a decade, said administrative churn is just the first of multiple ways state takeovers divert local taxpayers’ money in all states—not just Texas. “When the state comes in, it’s not coming in to provide more resources,” he said. Instead, state leaders are distributing resources “the way they want to see [them] distributed,” often in opposition to what the local community wants. 

Tiffany Perkinz, a former Beaumont ISD employee who is now running for the District 7 State Board of Education seat, told the Observer that she’s concerned that the new Beaumont superintendent, Massey, and the state-appointed board of managers there aren’t listening to community input as they make changes to the district. “Taxpayers are not receiving any elected representation, but they’re having to pay more in tax dollars, and so I think that’s an injustice.”

Lise Olsen contributed reporting.

The post The Takeover Tab: State-Imposed Superintendent Buyouts Cost School Districts Big Bucks appeared first on The Texas Observer.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

IMPERIAL, Texas—Many residents of this small town drive long distances to buy bottled water instead of opening up the tap.

Pecos County Fresh Water, a county-operated utility, provides drinking water for 800 people in Imperial and the surrounding area. The utility routinely violates safe drinking water standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency for “combined radium” and “gross alpha,” two metrics of radioactivity in water. The culprit is naturally occurring radioactive material in the aquifer.

Imperial is one of many rural communities in Texas where deposits of radioactive materials dissolve into the groundwater. But small communities often struggle to pay for costly treatment technology or alternative water sources that could fix the problem. During 2025, 29 public water systems that serve more than 22,000 people in Texas violated maximum levels of radionuclides. That’s down slightly from 2018, when a report by the non-profit Environmental Working Group found that 38 Texas utilities exceeded legal limits for radionuclides.

“It needs to be fixed,” said Pecos County Commissioner Nathan Reeves, who represents Imperial. “It’s a problem that should have been dealt with a long time ago.”

Reeves said the county has been rejected for several grants to address the problem, but recently obtained some funding. Pecos County is evaluating alternatives including blending with another water source or drilling a new well. In the meantime, residents rely on purchasing drinking water 30 miles away in Fort Stockton. 

“[Radiation] is especially an issue for these smaller systems that only have a limited number of wells they can rely on,” said Tasha Stoiber, an environmental chemist and senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group. “It’s a huge inequity and disparity of who is being exposed more.”

“This Is Not an Emergency”

In August 2025, Pecos County Fresh Water once again notified its customers that the utility had exceeded the EPA’s maximum level for radionuclides in drinking water.

“This is not an emergency,” the notice pinned in the Imperial post office and mailed to water customers declared, explaining that some radioactive minerals in water emit alpha radiation. “Some people who drink water containing alpha emitters in excess of the [Maximum Contaminant Limit] over many years may have an increased risk of getting cancer.”

To comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act, utilities that violate drinking water standards must inform their customers with standard language. While Texas officials say Imperial’s water does not pose an immediate health risk, many Imperial residents have stopped drinking it and buy bottled water for drinking and cooking. 

Claudia Pinedo serves burritos and tacos at Panchita’s Mexican Restaurant in Imperial. Much of her business comes from oilfield workers who drive through Imperial on their way to work.

The working class town, where many residents are Latino and speak Spanish at home, is a crossroads of the Permian Basin, about 50 miles south of Odessa. Irrigation from the nearby Pecos River once drew farmers to Imperial. Now the oil and gas industry is the economic engine in town.

Pinedo said she only uses bottled water at home and at the restaurant. She drives to Fort Stockton to fill 5-gallon jugs with fresh water, at $1.75 apiece. The additional expense of buying bottled water for the restaurant and her household with three children adds up.

Pinedo said her children grew up drinking bottled water and many other residents avoid the tap water in town.

“If customers have health concerns, they may want to talk to a health care professional to get more information about [how] the water quality may affect them,” TCEQ spokesperson Richard Richter told Inside Climate News.

Richter said that the EPA sets maximum limits based on a person drinking about a half gallon of water daily for 70 years. He said the limits are designed to protect susceptible groups including children and the elderly.

Imperial and surrounding Pecos County face more than their fair share of environmental challenges. Aging and plugged oil and gas wells have leaked on several ranches in the area. Less than five miles from Imperial, an abandoned well has leaked toxic water for years and formed a hazardous body of water known as Lake Boehmer.

The area’s abundant natural gas and large ranch properties have drawn data center developers. Ten miles as the crow flies from Imperial, Pacifico Energy has obtained permits to build a massive gas power plant, known as GW Ranch, to supply data centers. Amazon recently acquired the site to build a data center, as reported by the organization Cleanview.

Pacifico Energy’s website says it will not require “major external water sources” for the development. Large industrial facilities like GW Ranch could install treatment systems to remove contaminants that are common in area aquifers. Pacifico Energy did not respond to requests for comment. Cleanview reported that Amazon plans to use brackish water at the site.

But for small communities, those treatment costs can be prohibitive. Reeves, the county commissioner, explained that Fort Stockton, the county’s largest city with 8,000 residents, has a reverse osmosis treatment system. 

But, for places like Imperial, he said, “In these small towns, there’s no money and no help to throw at it.”

Violations Pile Up in Texas Communities

Radionuclides in drinking water typically come from naturally occurring radioactive material that dissolves into aquifers. In Texas, this problem is most acute in the Hickory Aquifer in Central Texas, the Ogallala Aquifer in North Texas and the Gulf Coast Aquifer. In Pecos County, the excess radium levels are from the Cenozoic Pecos aquifer. 

In 1976, the EPA added radionuclides to its drinking water standards. Water is sampled quarterly and compliance is measured by the annual average of the samples. The maximum contaminant level (MCL) for combined radium, which is the sum of Radium-226 and Radium-228, two naturally occurring isotopes of the element radium, is 5 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). For gross alpha radiation, excluding radon and uranium, the MCL is 15 pCi/L.

According to quarterly water testing data provided by TCEQ, Pecos County Fresh Water has violated the combined radium limits 19 times since Jan. 2020. On five occasions, testing found the combined radium levels below the legal limit. The highest combined radium reading since 2020 was 6.53 pCi/L in Oct. 2021. Gross alpha radiation concentrations have been in violation of the maximum level less frequently. 

Stoiber, of the Environmental Working Group, said that people who are pregnant or immunocompromised can be at increased risk when exposed to radioactivity. She added that people can be exposed not just from drinking the water but also when bathing or showering.

Sheldon Landsberger, a professor of nuclear and radiation engineering at the University of Texas, Austin, said that cancer risk from radionuclides in drinking water depends on the amount of water an individual drinks and the concentration of radionuclides in the water. 

While the water in Imperial is slightly above EPA limits, other utilities in Texas have water with far higher levels of radionuclides. The Millersview-Doole water utility, which serves nearly 4,000 residents of Concho County that relies on the Hickory Aquifer, reported combined radium levels of 64 pCi/L in 2025, almost 13 times the EPA limit.

Other counties where water utilities recorded excess radionuclides in 2025 include Lubbock, Midland, Burnet and Parker.

After years of violations, the city of Brady, population 5,000, celebrated bringing its drinking water into compliance with EPA radionuclide standards this April. The city obtained $31.4 million in funding from the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) for a treatment plant and other infrastructure. After years of violations, the city is now providing safe drinking water to its residents.

Landsberger emphasized that technologies to remove radionuclides are complex and costly.

“It’s not a simple thing to get rid of radium or any other type of toxic element or chemical that is already water soluble,” he said. “You need some very sophisticated chemical engineering processes to get rid of it.”

The Texas Water Infrastructure Coordination Committee centralizes information about funding for water utilities. TWDB’s Drinking Water Revolving Fund loan program prioritizes projects that address compliance with drinking water standards. A TWDB spokesperson said Pecos County Fresh Water has not applied for funding.

Groundwater will play a bigger role in Texas’ water supply in the years to come, as access to surface water dwindles. Communities such as Corpus Christi that are seeking new groundwater supplies may contend with excess radionuclides in the state’s aquifers. A test well drilled last year as a potential alternative water source for Corpus Christi has several times the EPA limit of gross alpha radiation, according to KRISTV.

TCEQ has come under scrutiny for its past enforcement of radionuclide levels in drinking water. A 2011 investigation by KHOU in Houston found that TCEQ for years had subtracted the margin of error, or counting error, in radium water testing results, despite EPA guidance against this practice. This resulted in fewer water utilities being found in violation of federal standards.

The TCEQ spokesperson said that the agency currently uses the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Information System to calculate compliance. He said the system “only utilizes the reported value when determining compliance, neither adding nor subtracting the counting error.”

The agency did not respond to questions about when it changed its methods for calculating compliance.

Local Official Seeks Solutions

Nathan Reeves, the Pecos County commissioner, remembers being taken aback the first time he received a notification letter about the radionuclides.

“Who would want to eat and drink with that water when you’ve gotten a letter like that?” he asked.

The problem has dragged on for years. TCEQ violation notices require the utility to submit a plan of how to get back in compliance. Reeves said that in the past, the county would submit a plan but significant progress was never made. Since becoming county commissioner four years ago, he has sought funding for a solution.

The county has contracted with a groundwater hydrologist to explore alternative water options for the utility and continues to seek grant funding.

“The main deal is to get better water, where we don’t have to send these letters,” he said. “The citizens deserve better.”

The post Permian Basin Community Seeks Fix for Radium in Its Drinking Water appeared first on The Texas Observer.