Tag: texas
West Virginia vs Texas Tech live stream: Watch Big 12 basketball for free
The oil industry’s carbon capture plan won’t help Texas’ most polluted communities
![The Greening of a City Built on Oil](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/EBO9Si6SzEJgHifD4BWCAac64Nk=/0x0:6720x4480/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72048843/1207018685.0.jpg)
A controversial tactic for slowing climate change is picking up steam in Texas: capturing carbon dioxide emissions from smokestacks. While that might reduce CO2 emissions heating up the planet, it could pose new problems for communities already saddled with industrial pollution.
Oil giant Occidental announced late last week that it leased 55,000 acres along the Gulf Coast of Texas to build out a hub for carbon capture technologies. The idea is to capture carbon dioxide emissions from nearby chemical plants, refineries, and factories. That CO2 then travels via pipeline to underground storage sites within Occidental’s proposed hub.
The prospect of these new kinds of pipelines crisscrossing through communities already has some e…
Proposed Texas bill seeks to ban abortion websites in the state
![Abortion rights demonstrators listen to speakers during a Women's March in Austin, Texas, US, on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022](https://helios-i.mashable.com/imagery/articles/01I9MUL0NxWmG6GhyCZnWrJ/hero-image.jpg)
The almost non-existent abortion rights of Texans may be further diminished as a new proposed bill by Republican legislators in the state seeks to ban access to websites that are “intended to assist or facilitate efforts to obtain an elective abortion or an abortion-inducing drug.” Since the ban on abortion in the state in 2022 following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, Texas Republicans are now targeting internet service providers in the proposed bill’s attempt to control how the internet is accessed.
HB2690, introduced by Republican State House Representative Steve Toth last week, calls upon ISPs to “make every reasonable and technologically feasible effort to block Internet access” to sites that provide information on how to obtain or access an abortion or abortion-inducing drugs, specifically, mifepristone and misoprostol. Rep. Toth’s bill also explicitly called out six websites: aidaccess.org, heyjane.co, plancpills.org, mychoix.co, justthepill.com, and carafem.org. This also prohibits individuals from creating a website “that assists or facilitates a person’s effort in obtaining an abortion-inducing drug,” according to the bill.
As The New Republic notes, medication abortions, i.e., abortions that can be performed outside of a doctor’s office using pills, represent more than half of all abortions in the United States.
While this bill doesn’t singularly target pregnant women, it does encourage citizens to seek civil action by allowing them to sue ISPs or individuals they believe to be violating the proposed law. This is in line with Texas’s “bounty hunter” approach to its abortion ban, calling upon citizens to enforce the law.
Broadly, the bill also attempts to expand its scope outside of Texas through purposefully ambiguous language establishing “civil liability for distribution of abortion-inducing drugs.” According to the ordinance, “the law of this state applies to the use of an abortion-inducing drug by a resident of this state, regardless of where the use of the drug occurs.”
ISPs are also financially incentivized to block as many websites and apps as possible by liability shields the bill would create. ISPs would have “absolute and nonwaivable immunity from liability or suit” for any “action taken to comply with the requirements of this subchapter, or to restrict access to or availability of the information or material described,” the bill says. It also provides immunity to ISPs that take proactive measures in blocking broadband access to individuals “who provide or aid or abet elective abortions or who manufacture, mail, distribute, transport, or provide abortion-inducing drugs.”
The proposed bill is a nightmare for free speech activists and supporters of internet statutes such as Section 230 and its kin. And despite a clause claiming it doesn’t apply to First Amendment-protected speech, critics of Rep. Toth’s bill have pointed out on social media that this legislation is trying to abridge free speech. Mashable attempted to speak to Toth’s office for comment but could not reach him or a spokesperson at the time of this writing.
As The Verge points out, proposed legislation such as HB2690 that allows for ISP blocking provisions would run afoul of net neutrality rules. However, under President Biden’s current FCC administration, the agency is currently deadlocked trying to confirm his nominee for commissioner, and thus, can’t reinstate rules that were rolled back during the Trump presidency. Extreme laws like these usually don’t pass, the Verge notes, but they can’t be ignored.
Despite Texas’ draconian laws on abortion, there are already attempts to skirt these potential new rulings on accessible abortion information. Mobile billboards sponsored by the nonprofit Mayday.Health are visiting college campuses in 14 states with abortion bans carrying a reminder that abortion pills are still accessible all across the country. The traveling billboards are fitted with QR codes that direct people to resources specific to the state where they are hoping to have pills delivered. Campuses in Austin and Dallas should expect to see the billboard soon in the coming days as March celebrates Women’s History Month.
As the current legal backdrop continues to attack the right to abortion across the country, here is information you can use to help abortion funds and reproductive networks around the nation.
Texas stabbing: Three kids killed and two found injured in horror attack at house
Abortion websites would be blocked in Texas under new bill
![A Texas abortion protest in front of the Harris County Courthouse](https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/-_9Vk4tb2RIoaaBV1D7XQaFHLw4=/1x0:7606x5070/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/72034050/1243828964.0.jpg)
A new bill in Texas would require internet service providers inside the state to block sites that provide abortion information, as well making it illegal to host or even provide domain registration for sites that help people in Texas obtain or pay for abortions.
The bill, filed February 23rd by representative Steve Toth, attempts to crush access to services that ship the pregnancy-terminating drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, as well as aid funds that raise money to cover the cost of abortion-related expenses. Under the new bill’s rules, it would be unlawful to “create, edit, upload, publish, host, maintain, or register a domain name for an internet website, platform, or other interactive computer service that assists or facilitates a…
Another Vortex Hits Texas | Extreme Earth
UFO Exploitation: The 1956 Texas Photo Fumble – The Saucers That Time Forgot
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UFO Exploitation: The 1956 Texas Photo Fumble – The Saucers That Time Forgot
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Texas Is Staring Down a Major Winter Storm
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An Arctic cold front is bearing down on the Great Plains and points south, all the way into Central Texas this week. Already, cold temperatures and freezing rain have begun across the state, and the dangerous winter weather is likely to persist through Wednesday, according to Monday morning’s short-range forecast from…