Every time Texas Democrats have a bad election (read: every two years), blame reasonably finds its way to a person whose title suggests quite a lot of culpability—the chair of something called the Texas Democratic Party. 

In reality, this person has little control over what most critics are likely focused on: the selection of individual candidates and their ensuing policy preferences and general quality. Nor does he (lately, it has been a he) hold much sway over the forces that seem to swing modern elections. Presidential politics, the rapidity of human aging, hemispheric economic inequality, Joe Rogan. 

What the state party chair does is tend the infrastructure that underlies a cycle’s more news-making aspects—administering the party’s primary elections, data operations, voter registration efforts, and other nuts and bolts. He may also attempt to set a messaging tone for the party, though, again, with minimal control over candidates and generally a duty to support nominees regardless of ideology.

Into this role of perhaps more responsibility than power steps Kendall Scudder, a 35-year-old Dallasite who handily won the job in a party election this March. Scudder replaces Gilberto Hinojosa, who chaired the party through a 12-year period of brief-lived hope punctuated by profound disappointment. Hinojosa, whose native South Texas veered toward Trump last fall, resigned his position midterm.

Scudder bills himself as both a progressive firebrand and a self-sacrificing devotee of the party. His electoral history includes a successful bid for the Dallas County Appraisal District board last year (a role he resigned to run for party chair), preceded by unsuccessful runs for a solid-blue Dallas state House district, a deep-red Texas Senate seat, and positions on the Huntsville City Council (thrice). Raised in rural northeast Texas by two moms, he was drawn early to politics by attacks on families like his. After college at Sam Houston State, he worked in affordable housing, real estate analytics, and campaign consulting.

The Texas Observer spoke with him in mid-July about Bernie Sanders, the Hill Country flood, and diversity. 

Kendall Scudder addresses attendees at an event in Brownsville on April 12. (Michael Gonzalez/Texas Observer)

TO: What are two specific things you’re doing differently than Gilberto Hinojosa, who ran the party for so long before you?

Well, Gilberto’s a very nice man, and I think you would be hard-pressed to find someone who disagreed with that. He did a great service to the party for a long time. I’m a 35-year-old who sees the role a little bit differently than some of the political establishment. I think that we have done a real disservice to our grass roots. We right now have half of our precinct chair spots in the state of Texas vacant. We have more than 20 percent of our counties without a county chair. If we’re not even walking in the door in these communities, then don’t put your jaw on the floor and be shocked when you start losing there. So I’d say number one is I believe that we have to build a grassroots apparatus in every corner of the state, and that is challenging in Texas because we have 40 midsize cities with 100,000 people in them.

Number two, I believe that the way we unite each other as a party is landing on a message that impacts every single member of our coalition. And so what is a message that resonates with every single person in our coalition? Well, I believe it’s that they all pay bills and they’re all struggling right now to get ahead. When I look at the party that I grew up in, it’s a party for the little people, the working poor. That’s what Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson—the party that put together big, bold progressive ideas to help working people, that is who we are. And we’ve lost sight of that. That’s where I see myself as different from the status quo of the party, that I have a laser focus on what we do every single day to help working people get ahead. And if that means taking on banks and taking on billionaires and doing whatever we have to do to flip the table, I don’t mind disrupting systems to help the little guy.

You recently participated in Bernie Sanders’ “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, and your comments focused on that economic populist message. Looking back, do you think primary voters and party elites made a mistake in not nominating Sanders for the presidency in 2020 or 2016?

You know, I think primaries are snapshots of where people’s heads are in a moment in time. And I think if there were a primary happening today in this country, Bernie Sanders would be doing really well. And I speak as a kid from a small farm town in East Texas. It was just known that if you were a working-class person, you were a Democrat because they were the only party that fought for you, and I think we’ve gotten away from it. Bernie’s done a really good job of staying on that message. Even if you don’t love Bernie, I don’t think you’d argue he didn’t have really good message discipline, and we could benefit from that as a party.

I did read that you worked for the Michael Bloomberg campaign in 2020. Is that who you voted for then, and have your politics shifted since?

No, and I left the Bloomberg campaign whenever I saw the education platform that he put out at that point.

So you did, but it was brief and you left based on policy? 

Yeah, it was very brief, and I think at that point in time, a lot of people were very anxious about Donald Trump and trying to figure out what’s the path out. And there were a lot of us—you know, admit your wrongs—that were looking at this thinking, “Here’s a guy who could probably help fund this and end some of the cash disparity that we’re going to have in resourcing this election.” And then it just became very clear to me that that was not something I was going to be able to stomach.

With this recent reconciliation bill out of Congress, President Donald Trump goes and slashes Medicaid and taxes for billionaires. But there’s another huge portion of the spending that is border and immigration policy. A historic expansion of ICE’s budget, probably enough money to wall off the entire border and put razor buoys in the entire Rio Grande. What should be the state party’s message to the millions of undocumented people and voting family members of undocumented people in Texas?

We are a party that believes that every person should be treated with dignity and respect, doesn’t matter how little they are. Whether that means you are a doctor or a janitor, or you have shown up on the border carrying a baby a thousand miles across the desert on your back, you deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. That’s what this country is built on, this idea of people having an opportunity to pursue a better life. That doesn’t mean we have this open-borders policy where absolutely anyone can come in at any time. But what it does mean is that if you have situations where people are denied entry, they’re treated with respect. It means if you have people who have been living here for years that haven’t been breaking the law, that have been contributing members of our society, we should do what we can to make sure they’re able to stay here because we want them here. We do not want to turn away people who are the quintessential American citizen that we’re all striving to become. 

This may sound basic, but do you think the Texas Democratic Party should still be celebrating racial and ethnic and linguistic diversity in Texas as a value in itself?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s what makes Texas great. Texas is, like, like six different states with a whole bunch of different cultures in it. That diversity is what has not only made Texas this fascinating endeavor, but it’s also what has made Texas so successful. You build successful, robust economies with diversity.

To close this out, because it’s going on while we’re talking, do you have any comment on the Hill Country floods?

I think time is going to shine a really bright spotlight on the mismanagement of Republicans, not just in this one instance, but in a period of time, a cycle of bad decisions that they’ve made. From the courthouse to the White House, where they have fought to dismantle government and lost sight of the reality that those governmental systems existed because people were depending on them to save their lives in moments like this. And when you continue to do this over and over, there are going to be repercussions. We’re not talking about blame; we’re talking about accountability. We are doing a disservice to every one of those families and to everyone in the state when we sit around and say that this isn’t about politics. I’m sorry, it is about politics. 

This happened because a bunch of politicians put a message they could put on their campaign mailer ahead of protecting people’s lives. We can use this moment as a pivot point to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Democrats are happy to work with Republicans to do that—or they can spend this moment all on self-preservation, talking about how they aren’t to blame and changing absolutely nothing in the way that they operate. That’s what I suspect they’re going to do. But I just think it’s shortsighted, and it is a huge disservice to Texans.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The post 🎶It’s His Party and He’ll…🎶 appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By DAVID McHUGH, Associated Press Business Writer

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The head of the European Parliament’s trade committee said Wednesday he has “doubts” about aspects of the EU’s trade deal with the Trump administration and predicted the deal could be amended during the legislative approval process.

“A lot of questions are there, and I guess there will be some amendments,” said committee chairman Bernd Lange, adding that “myself and also some colleagues of mine have doubts about the deal.”

FILE – Chairman of European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade (INTA) Bernd Lange attends a news conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File)

Lange stopped short of outright opposing the agreement struck July 27 between the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and U.S. President Donald Trump. The deal imposes a 15% tariff on European goods while lowering EU tariffs on U.S. cars and industrial goods to zero; some EU goods including aircraft, cork and generic pharmaceuticals, were exempted from the 15% rates.

The deal has had a mixed reception in Europe, with business associations saying it imposes high costs that will impede exports to the U.S. Von der Leyen says that it will lower a painful 27.5% tariff on autos and bring stability and predictability for businesses.

Lange however said “there is no security or predictability, citing a U.S. decision two weeks after the deal was struck to include some 400 different goods containing steel such as pumps and motorcycle under a 50% steel and aluminum tariff instead of the 15% tariff.

A top EU trade official urged the committee to approve the deal, saying the rate was low enough to keep trade flowing and maintain EU companies access to the U.S. market while avoiding a worse trade conflict. “You need to look at the alternative,” said Sabine Weyand, director general for trade.

The agreement has been set down only in a 3 1/2 joint statement that left room for further talks on key issues.

Trump faces questions about whether he exceeded his legal authorities by declaring a national emergency under a 1977 law to impose the broad tariffs. A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld a previous lower court ruling that the president lacked the power to exact tariffs of that magnitude without going through Congress or using other legal mechanisms, a decision that Trump said Tuesday will in turn be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump aroused concern Aug. 26 by threatening tariffs in response to EU digital regulation, which EU officials said were not part of the deal.

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“Where will it end – we are just getting more and more demands from Trump,” said deputy Saskia Bricmont, a member of the Greens/European Free Alliance group.

Parliamentary action would be needed to implement the EU side of the tariffs deal. Lange did not say what the amendments might contain. The leader of one group in parliament, the center-left Socialists and Democrats, has come out against the deal but the group has only 136 seats in the 720-seat parliament and cannot stop the deal by itself. Lange is a member of the group.

The European Commission underlined its determination to expand cooperative trade to other partners beyond the US, on Wednesday sending free trade deals with Mexico and the Mercosur trading bloc in Latin America for ratification by member states.

The Mercosur deal would create what EU officials call the world’s largest free trade zone with 700 million people and lower high tariffs on EU farm exports in Latin America. It also would protect some politically sensitive EU farm products, particularly beef, in an attempt to mollify objections from EU farm lobbies in France and Poland.

A limited amount of Mercosur beef – equal to around 1.5% of the European market – would face a moderate 7.5% tariff, but quantities above that would be hit with prohibitively high rates. There is also 6.3 billion euros in support for farmers in case of unexpected market disruptions.

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is steadying on Wednesday as Alphabet and other technology stocks rise.

The S&P 500 added 0.3% and was on track to break its two-day losing streak since setting its latest all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 152 points, or 0.3%, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9% higher.

Google’s parent company climbed 7.9% and was one of the strongest forces lifting the market after avoiding some of the worst-case scenarios in its antitrust case. A federal judge on Tuesday ordered a shake-up of Google’s search engine but did not force a sale of its Chrome browser.

Because Alphabet is one of Wall Street’s most valuable companies, its stock movements carry more weight on the S&P 500 and other indexes than the typical company’s.

Also helping to steady Wall Street was a calming bond market. A day earlier, rising yields for government bonds around the world raised the pressure on the stock market. Yields climbed on worries about governments’ abilities to repay their growing mountains of debt, as well as concerns that President Donald Trump’s pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut short-term interest rates could lead to higher inflation in the long term.

Such worries have pushed investors to demand higher yields in exchange for lending money to governments worldwide. And when bonds are paying more in interest, investors are less likely to pay high prices for stocks, which are riskier investments.

On Wednesday, Treasury yields retreated following the latest weaker-than-expected report on the U.S. job market. The 10-year Treasury yield fell to 4.22% from 4.28% late Tuesday, for example.

The report showed that U.S. employers were advertising 7.2 million job openings at the end of July, fewer than economists expected. The numbers bolster the growing sense on Wall Street that the job market is ossifying into a low-hire, low-fire state.

A weakened job market could push the Federal Reserve to cut its main interest rate for the first time this year at its next meeting, which is scheduled for later this month. That’s the widespread expectation among traders.

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Lower interest rates could give the job market and overall economy a boost, along with prices for investments. But they can also push inflation higher when Trump’s tariffs may raising prices for all kinds of imports.

Trading on Wall Street was mixed outside of tech stocks, which benefited from the Alphabet ruling. Apple rose 3.1%, as analysts said the ruling will still allow it to sign lucrative search deals with Google.

“This is a relief, an outcome that is much better than feared for Google and for Apple,” according to Chris Marangi, co-chief investment officer of value at Gabelli Funds.

Macy’s jumped 19.4% for one of the market’s bigger gains after the retailer reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. The owner of Bloomingdale’s delivered the best growth in an important measure of sales in three years, and it also raised its forecasts for sales and profit this fiscal year.

American Bitcoin, a bitcoin treasury and mining company linked to the Trump family, soared 91.3% in its first day of trading on the Nasdaq after completing a merger with Gryphon Digital Mining. Movements for its stock were so frenetic that trading was halted several times in the day’s first hour.

On the losing end of Wall Street was Dollar Tree, even though the retailer reported better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. A chunk of its stronger-than-expected performance came because of the timing of tariffs, which could drag down its results in the current quarter.

Analysts also said expectations were high for the value retailer coming into its report. Its stock fell 9.1%, slicing into its gain for the year that came into the day at a stellar 48.6%.

In stock markets abroad, European indexes ticked higher following a weaker finish across much of Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 fell 0.9% amid uncertainty about the political future of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.

AP Business Writer Yuri Kageyama contributed.

By Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times

Styling your up-do while you’re traveling has become easier with the introduction of cordless curling irons and hair straighteners, but it has also gotten more complicated to fly with these hair care tools.

Lithium-ion batteries used to power cordless hairstyling tools allow these devices to have faster charging and longer usage times, and are thus more reliable, according to the Growth Market Reports, a market research and business consulting firm.

But replacing the cord with a battery for power is what’s keeping the devices out of the cargo section of the plane.

The Transportation Security Administration recently sought to iron out the details in a post on X.

Plug-in hair straighteners and curling irons don’t have any flight restrictions so you’re free to pack them in your carry-on or check-in luggage.

But the TSA said their counterpart has restrictions: cordless hairstyling tools that are powered by lithium metal or lithium-ion batteries or gas or butane fuel are allowed only in carry-on bags. That’s so that passengers or flight attendants can react if they start to overheat in the cabin. If they overheat or combust in your checked bag in the cargo area of a plane, it may take a while for anyone to notice.

As an extra protective measure, the hair care tool must have a safety cover securely fitted over the heating element.

What are the flight restrictions for cordless hairstyling tools?

Cordless hairstyling tools, with the specific battery, gas or butane fuel, are allowed only in carry-on bags due to their combustible nature, according to a TSA spokesperson.

Lithium-ion batteries, for example, can overheat, resulting in heavy smoke and in some cases fire, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Items that are commonly powered by such batteries include battery packs, e-cigarettes, cellphones and laptops. These items are allowed to travel with you only in your carry-on bag.

If the items, “catch fire in the cargo area where checked bags are transported, there’s no one there to put it out,” Daniel Velez, spokesperson for Florida’s TSA, told the Florida Times-Union.

On a flight from Lihue, Hawaii, to Los Angeles International Airport in July, a passenger’s e-cigarette overheated inside their backpack, according to an FAA report of the incident.

The flight attendant secured the e-cigarette in a thermal containment bag without injury, damage to the plane or flight interruptions.

There have been a total of 644 verified incidents of lithium batteries creating smoke, fire or extreme heat between 2006 and 2025, according to the FAA.

Of the total number of incidents, 482 occurred in the passenger area of the plane and 136 occurred in the cargo area.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.