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  • I think that it’s now safe to say that we Texans now live in a failed state.  30 years of GOP rule, setting our own standard, living the “Texas Dream,” which they’ve bragged about relentlessly…and let’s see where we are:

    A majority of the state in complete failure, unable to deliver the most BASIC of services (things that are called “utilities,” not “luxuries,” for a reason).  No power.  No water.  No means of clearing roads (that one, I can’t fault the state so much….but it wouldn’t be as big a crisis if people weren’t stuck in their homes with no power and water).  So citizens are stuck in their homes, some of them dying there. 

    Water resource planning?  After pretending for decades that a drought would never happen again, and not doing ANYTHING to develop resources in the state water plan (a document actually developed using science and mathematical projections), we had several locations, including actual cities, down to a few days of water supply.  We’ve finally gotten on our horse a bit, but it may be too late if the next drought comes anytime soon.  

    State rank in key categories:

    Education – 34

    Health Care - 37

    Infrastructure - 33

    Opportunity - 39

    Environment - 44

    Infrastructure - 33 

    In overall quality of life ranking by US News, we are now #38, down from #36 just two years ago.  At that rate, we’ll be in the bottom 3 within ten years.

    We are SUPER independent, and FUCK the feds….but we have requested federal disaster assistance more than any other state in the past decade or so.

    But hey, our economy is ranked #15!

    That’s right, we have a “roaring economy” and the “Texas Miracle!”  But we can’t deliver the basics for our citizens.  The economy is VERY efficient at funneling bazillions to the very few…..with little of it “trickling down” to most Texans.  Yeah, the people on this board generally do fine, but face the facts – we’re the top 10% or so.  We are educated, older, and fortunate.

    Our federal system allows for state-by-state experiments.  Texas is the poster child for near anarcho-capitalism and zero regulation or oversight.  We have tested that approach, for over a generation now (30 years of Republican rule).  That approach is a failure.  The evidence is undeniable, and overwhelming.  It doesn’t matter how many River Oaks millionaires you produce if the rest of your people are dying in their homes.  Shit, some of those River Oaks millionaires might be freezing to death today, too.

    The kids of a middle class family can hardly afford to go to a good state school.  Their prospects for employment are mediocre.  Their prospects of suffering crippling medical debt at some point are significant.  Their chances of not having basic utilities needed for life safety at some point – all but certain.  Their chances of becoming ill or dying from a pollution-caused illness are material.

    What’s the result?  Our leaders have sold Texas as a paradise – move here!  Bring your business here!  And some businesses have done so, adding opportunity…..but providing little to no tax support for the infrastructure we all depend on.  To the contrary, over the past few years, I know more and more people – educated people, people who can do their jobs elsewhere, who are looking to bail on this state.  It’s people with young kids, who want them to grow up in a better place.  It’s people in their working years, who simply want a better path.  It’s retirees, who want a safe and secure place to live.

    We have consumed our seed stock.  We have burned through our reserves.  We are now consuming ourselves.  The ability to pitch Texas as the land of opportunity is done.  Seeing what we have become, the tentative thought/plan my wife and I had of wrapping up our careers here and then getting the hell out of Dodge is becoming much more concrete.  My children are already unlikely to make their future in this state.  Now we are, too.

    But the response from the Republican leadership and their sycophants – “how are you gonna pay for it?  Taxes?  That’s socialism!  You want that stuff, you have to pay for it!”

    Fuck yes I do, and I’m okay with that.  I want groceries…so I have to pay HEB.  I want a car…so I have to pay Ford.  I want clothes…..so I have to pay Dillards.  I want my population educated….so I have to pay the school district.  I want electricity, with enough capacity to keep us running when we need it…..so I have to pay my bill, maybe with a capacity surcharge.  I want water to come out of the taps….so I have to pay for development of resources and maintenance of infrastructure.  I want roads….so I pay taxes to build and maintain them.  YES, I have to pay for all of those things, and “nothing is free” – no fucking shit.  So, let’s pay for it.  We have the #15 economy….we HAVE the funds in this state.  An economy with the flow of funds that ours has can produce and maintain all of those results.  But we have chosen a different path; funnel all the dollars to the top, and spend next to nothing for the public good.  We have privatized profit….we have socialized the costs.  And we are dying because of it.

    My fellow Texans are dying in their homes….and there’s nothing I can do about it today.  And I am enraged.

    I love Texas.  I am 6th generation here.  My ancestors have Texas historical markers on their graves.  We helped make this state, and this state helped make us.  It educated us (back when college was affordable).  But it’s time to face the fact – this state is a failure, and on its current path, with its current leadership and philosophy, it will only get worse.  This state has a terrible future, unless we dramatically change our path.   Chances of that happening?  0.0% -- because we’ll continue to vote for the guys who make our leadership priorities bathroom bills, and transgender sports, and requiring the national anthem be played at certain events.  Any bill that has been proposed to improve emergency preparedness of gov’t entities has been crushed by the Republicans controlling the lege….but we will definitely stick with those guys.  No taxes.  No government functionality.

    What we are seeing happening right now is our system working EXACTLY AS IT WAS DESIGNED AND INTENDED TO WORK.  And we will, I guarantee it, collectively decide to stick with that.  This state is in free-fall, and anyone with eyes can see it.  And anyone with a brain is starting to think of ways to make their life elsewhere.  It breaks my goddamned heart to see us commit collective suicide, but here we are.

     

     


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    HenryJames

    Posted

    1 minute ago, Gatorubet said:

    Well, the Barsoom vote is pretty much a monolithic block. 

    Watch John Carter | Disney+

    I'd probably vote for this guy.

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    tx 3 putt

    Posted

    how much did this cost him ?

     

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    SydneyCarton

    Posted

    23 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

    how much did this cost him ?

     

    You're not considering the fact that Trump doesn't care about party nearly as much as he loves pardoning criminals, regardless of stripe. The clown from NJ probably next. 

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    tx 3 putt

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

    You're not considering the fact that Trump doesn't care about party nearly as much as he loves pardoning criminals, regardless of stripe. The clown from NJ probably next. 

     

    what's there to gain for trump on this ?

    SydneyCarton

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

     

    what's there to gain for trump on this ?

    He can say "See, I pardon democrats too" and Cuellar probably gave him some tips on bribery. 

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    Brisketexan

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

     

    what's there to gain for trump on this ?

    It sets the tone.

    Corruption isn't just not a problem, it is the order of the day.  It is a-ok now.

    Trafficking massive amounts of narcotics using the apparatus of a nation state isn't not just a problem.....it's perfectly fine.

    Defrauding people for hundreds of millions of dollars to enrich yourself gets pardoned because that is actually the preferred way of doing business for the regime.

     

    All of these are setting a tone.   Corruption, drug trafficking for profit, and fraud/grift are all socially GOOD things now.  Get on board the Trump train!

    This is the most nakedly criminal regime in US history, and there's truly not even a close second.  And we aren't even a year into this.  I don't think our treasury will survive this (don't forget that the DOJ is handing out "settlements," paid with millions upon millions of YOUR tax dollars, to anyone who sues the US government and who the regime favors, including Michael Flynn and even Trump himself.  They've found and exploited a literal cheat code that lets them hand US treasury dollars directly to friends and members of the regime).

    This is the "The Joker becomes the mayor" storyline in real fucking life.

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    Bozo_Casanova

    Posted (edited)

    28 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

     

    what's there to gain for trump on this ?

    Continuing the flip of the South Texas machines politically, and accessing the money behind them personally.

    Edited by Bozo_Casanova
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    tx 3 putt

    Posted (edited)

    6 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

    Continuing the flip of the South Texas machines politically, and accessing the money behind them personally.

     

    the drug / cartel money in the rgv would shock people 

    border patrol guys - all their kid goto private school, all the wives have luxury suv's, closet full of $$$ purses, lot of jewelry, big custom build homes. just a small example lol 

    allegedly, $10K / month to let one truck through a month. the tow truck drivers help recruit and identify the right people. entry level pay

    allegedly 

    Edited by tx 3 putt
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    Evil Bill Obrien

    Posted

    4 hours ago, CooterBrown said:


    I think I mentioned this earlier in this thread. This happened a few weeks ago. Some of the HUB program team were on the road to Houston to host a workshop and they got a call to turn around because their program no longer existed. I need to ask if anybody informed the attendees or if they just got ghosted.

    You really think our current state leadership gives a shit about ghosting a workshop for women and minorities...

     

    Chewbacca

    Posted

    3 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

     

    what's there to gain for trump on this ?

    He's got to be getting paid.  There are way too many of them (and they are all wealthy or have access to donors) for there to be any other reason.

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    atomheartbevo

    Posted

    5 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

    Corruption isn't just not a problem, it is the order of the day.  It is a-ok now.

    Trafficking massive amounts of narcotics using the apparatus of a nation state isn't not just a problem.....it's perfectly fine.

    Defrauding people for hundreds of millions of dollars to enrich yourself gets pardoned because that is actually the preferred way of doing business for the regime.

    He respects these three men for trying to get paid.

    Brisketexan

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

    He respects these three men for trying to get paid.

    Absolutely.  And, he wants in on the action.  The Boss always gets his vig.

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    4th&Five

    Posted

    13 minutes ago, GreenspointTexas said:

    Jesus

    image.gif.cd1d99b162176ea719a2bb2e63a537b3.gif

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    Slacks

    Posted

    I need 5 years... Can y'all hold on that long?

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    hookemATL

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Firemans4Horn said:

     

     

    white GIF by hero0fwar

    • Like 3
    tx 3 putt

    Posted

    Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks have to be pushing this 

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    speed817

    Posted

     

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    Biff Tannen

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Firemans4Horn said:

     

     

    Oh this is some sick shit

    tx 3 putt

    Posted

    some hs kid somewhere will fire up a club for communists lol 

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    Eskimohorn

    Posted

    some hs kid somewhere will fire up a club for communists lol 

    Its called Theatre Arts
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    Updawg

    Posted

    Abbot and Patrick are so dumb. They are always 4-6 months late on everything. Just clueless. Which is something good for us but we are still stuck with morons. It’s pathetic

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    speed817

    Posted

    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/10/us/university-of-texas-republicans-academic-freedom-faculty.html

    https://archive.ph/J1gOl

    Spoiler

    In a state dominated by conservatives, the University of Texas at Austin stood out.


    Its leadership had often been a thorn in the side of the state’s politicians, resisting efforts to erode faculty power and championing diversity efforts. The university successfully defended its race-conscious admissions policy all the way to the Supreme Court in 2016. It has long been a magnet for liberal students and student activism.


    Today, the conservatives are winning. State Republicans have passed laws to curtail what is taught in college classrooms and installed new university administrators with partisan affiliations, among a host of new strategies to remake a public higher education system that they argue has been held hostage to left-leaning ideas and become hostile to conservative ones.


    The University of Texas is one of their main targets.


    The campus is no longer led by an academic, but a Republican lawyer who worked for the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton. The president has promised curricular changes, and the system is now conducting an audit of all gender studies courses, after a State House bill passed in May enshrined in state law that there are effectively only two genders. Another piece of legislation, Senate Bill 37, gutted faculty control of universities, tightened a grip on what can be taught and gave appointed governing boards the power to approve academic leaders, including academic deans.


    The Austin campus has opened the School of Civic Leadership, one of many such new schools on college campuses with the goal of attracting more conservative students. The university laid off several dozen employees last year after a state law made diversity and inclusion offices illegal at public colleges.


    A similar story is playing out across Texas.

    This fall, the firing of a Texas A&M instructor teaching a gender studies course after a student complained put the university at the center of a national debate over a crackdown on professors’ speech. The instructor’s department head and dean also lost their administrative posts, and eventually, the Texas A&M president resigned.


    Last month, the university system’s regents went even farther than Texas lawmakers, approving a policy that requires courses that teach  “race or gender ideology” to have the approval of the president. The Texas Tech University System has also sought to limit how race and gender are taught in its schools and created a new course approval process.


    But perhaps no campus embodies the depth of the change in Texas higher education more than the University of Texas at Austin, located blocks away from the Texas Capitol building.


    The Austin campus is one of a handful of universities that has responded warmly to a Trump administration offer to give funding preferences to schools that adhere to its list of policy prescriptions. The proposal was widely panned by advocates of academic freedom. The handful of other schools that embraced it are right-leaning schools, such as New College in Florida.


    Some faculty and students worry lawmakers are trying to turn the University of Texas — a selective school that attracts students from across the country — into a conservative campus. But state officials and the university’s new leaders, along with the Trump administration, say their goal is to restore balance to universities.


    “Texas is targeting professors who are more focused on pushing leftist ideologies rather than preparing students to lead our nation,” Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in October. “We must end indoctrination.”


    In a state of the university speech in October, Jim Davis, the University of Texas president, said changes on campus are meant “to create balance.”


    “We don’t want degree programs that are so narrow they develop only one perspective,” he said.

    The Trump administration this year has led an aggressive attack against higher education, threatening to strip a set of mostly private institutions of large sums of money if they don’t conform to the president’s policies. But it is public university systems that are seeing some of the biggest changes.


    For years, Florida, which, like Texas, has unified Republican control of state government, served as a lab for conservative changes. Other conservative states like Indiana, Ohio and Alabama have also demanded changes at their schools that have led to quick acquiescence, most notably the closure of diversity programs and new limits on professors.


    But the main energy is now in Texas, where Republicans who learned from Florida are going even further.


    The changes over the last year have been rapid fire, leaving students and faculty members reeling. At a coffee shop across the street from the Austin campus last month, five students spoke of fear and helplessness.


    Sofia Gomez, a rhetoric and writing major, said a history professor told her of pulling a book about the experiences of a transgender man, a move the professor described as the toughest decision of her career.


    “I considered transferring out of U.T.,” said Ms. Gomez, “because if my professors are unable to teach me, and I’m not able to have candid conversations to get a proper education, what am I here for?”

    A recent poll by the student newspaper, The Daily Texan, found that 40 percent of faculty respondents are changing their syllabus or teaching approach to comply with state legislation.


    “I take classes that are supposed to be about politics, and a lot of professors are scared to even apply anything we learn to the modern day,” said Mia Reballosa, a junior majoring in government. “There’s this large looming fear on campus.”


    The university is exploring consolidating many liberal arts departments, an effort many faculty members believe is aimed at eliminating politically controversial departments. One of the units most under fire is the university’s gender studies department. Its chair, Lisa Moore, initially agreed to an interview but then declined.


    Mary Neuburger, the head of Slavic and Eurasian studies, another department under threat, said she remained quiet until she had trouble sleeping at night. Then she began talking publicly.


    “There’s total chaos,” Dr. Neuburger said in an interview, noting a constant turnover of administrators. “When you tell a unit they might not exist by the end of the year, what do you think that does for morale?”


    “I’ve been at U.T. for almost 30 years,” she added, “and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

    In a statement, the university said the academic reviews will explore factors like student demand and academic rigor.


    “The university,” the statement continued, “is also encouraging academic units that have allowed some of their hiring, programs and course offerings to become excessively politicized to instead recommit themselves to balanced inquiry, depoliticized curricula and welcoming a diverse range of views (especially on controversial issues).”


    Some professors have welcomed the political scrutiny.


    The dynamics on the Austin campus, with professors and students skewing to the left and the power structure to the right, “forces a calibration back to the middle” and pushes the university out of a “homogenous echo chamber,” said Steven T. Collis, a law professor.


    “My own experience has been that faculty who are genuinely trying to seek truth and pass on knowledge to their students and show the complexity of views on any given issue have absolutely nothing to worry about,” he said.

    One of Senate Bill 37’s provisions gives a university system’s regents, who are political appointees, authority to reject courses. It also gives them final approval over the selection of a provost, a university’s top academic officer, and even a dean.


    The Austin campus became the first school to hire a provost — William Inboden, a historian who served in the George W. Bush White House — under the new policy. He began his job in August.


    In an interview, Dr. Inboden said that his goal was to “depoliticize higher education” because it faces a “crisis of confidence” brought on by a professoriate that has become skewed to the left and too political.


    He said universities can attract more conservatives if they pay attention to their curricular offerings. Dr. Inboden used history as an example. The discipline should include historians of diplomacy, the military, business and religion — subfields that he says have “atrophied” over the last half-century.


    “There’s been a move much more into doing race and gender history,” he said, along with environmental and class history.


    Faculty members say they are frustrated with the overhaul efforts because conservative critics have not pointed to specific examples of indoctrination or ideological conformity. Dr. Inboden himself noted that even as he had criticisms of how history is taught, the Austin history department “is better than a lot of other universities on this.”


    And some say universities are naturally going to be progressive places, since young people tend to skew left politically.

    Jim Nicar, an alumnus who researches the university’s history, cited a seminal academic freedom controversy from the 1940s. The university’s regents fired President Homer Rainey after a series of academic freedom controversies, including his refusal to fire economics professors agitating for a 40-hour work week.


    Some regents then believed progressivism was running amok on the Austin campus. Thousands of students marched on the streets of Austin, some carrying a coffin with the words “Academic Freedom” over it.


    Mr. Nicar said that lawmakers and regents have since learned their lesson. “Instead of trying to get around the president,” he said, “the thing to do now is to replace presidents with people who are more favorable.”


    The author of Senate Bill 37, Brandon Creighton, a longtime critic of liberal ideology in higher education, began serving as chancellor of the Texas Tech system in September. The head of the Texas A&M University and University of Texas systems are also former Republican lawmakers.


    The campus changes will be easier because the law also gutted faculty senates, through which professors share in the governance of many campuses. The University of Texas went farther than the legislation required and dissolved its faculty council. University officials say they still value faculty input, but it will now come via a panel appointed by the president.


    The new system is “very much corporate and top down,” said Gordon Novak, a former faculty council member who became a professor at U.T. in the 1970s. He said the leaders are likely to filter out anyone deemed radical or difficult.

    At the coffee shop near campus, students said they worried about what is safe to discuss in their classes under the new leadership.


    “They don’t consider questioning how women are treated in society,” said Ryan Lowe, a math and linguistics major. “They don’t consider questioning how African American people are treated in society. They see those as questions that don’t need to be asked.”

     

     

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    Biff Tannen

    Posted

    21 minutes ago, speed817 said:

    State Republicans have passed laws to curtail what is taught in college classrooms and installed new university administrators with partisan affiliations, among a host of new strategies to remake a public higher education system that they argue has been held hostage to left-leaning ideas and become hostile to conservative ones.

    images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQJdjKqJ6VmyF0V_cxJ9FZ

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    Nivek

    Posted

    On 12/8/2025 at 9:27 PM, speed817 said:

     

    These fucking morons don't even understand that our country wasn't founded with education in mind.  Public education really took off in the mid 1800s, even it its roots went back to English Colonial America in MA.  

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    CooterBrown

    Posted

    A solution to the TP chapters in schools is for all gay students to join, win the leadership positions and make TP the de facto gay club on campus.

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    miguelito

    Posted

    Instead of the closeted gay club?

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    dcbc

    Posted (edited)

    On 11/24/2025 at 10:38 AM, South Austin said:

    I can't speak as intelligently on the THC debate, other than my continued view that our state leadership sucks donkey taint.

    But I do have personal experience with synthetically produced narcotics, namely Delta 9 and most recently, Kratom.  Not to hijack a thread with family trauma, but last year my stepson went into rehab after a Delta 9 addiction helped throw him off the rails his first year of college.  My wife and I read up on synthetic Delta 9, which for some kids with ADHD (like him) and other related mental developmental disorders, it can really fuck up your brain wiring in a way that natural pot does not.  And most recently, he relapsed with Kratom.  And what's the similarity with the two?  He was able to freely buy both in most convenience stores in town.  While Kratom, like THC, is a naturally-occurring plant, its synthetic derivatives can produce symptoms and resulting addiction very similar to opioids.  It's just bad bad shit, and reports of overdosing on Kratom are growing.  While my stepson has some personal accountability in all this, I have growing anger over the fact that stores can legally peddle this crap to 18-year-olds.  

    So as much as Dan Patrick's THC crusade may have been yet another annoying waste of time our MAGA controlled state government, I'm increasingly in favor of laws to curb or ban over-the-counter sales of this synthetic bullshit.

    tl;dr - Dan Patrick and Kratom can both get fucked.

    I'm sorry to hear about your step-son's troubles.  The only thing I'd ever heard about Kratom was that it was what people used to substitute for opioids.  No bueno.  As for synthetically produced THC, are you talking about things like K2 or Spice as opposed to hemp-derived THC?  The former two were criminalized in this area years ago (long before the 2018 Hemp Bill).  But in any event, whatever happens with the hemp industry, I hope they set age restrictions, which they have, albeit by executive order.  That seems like a no-brainer.

    As to your tl, dr: Yep.

    Edited by dcbc
    UpperWestside

    Posted

    On 12/3/2025 at 5:50 AM, Brisketexan said:

    I mean....

    will-ferrel-we-are-laughing.gif

    It's pretty fucking clear at this point....and just think about the pardons issued in JUST THE PAST WEEK:

    Defrauding people for literally hundreds of millions of dollars?  That's a-ok now.

    Trafficking drugs at literally the nation-state level, using the apparatus of the nation state to do so?  A-ok.

    Naked corruption and accepting foreign bribes to influence US policy?  A-ok.

     

    Jesus fucking Christ, you remember how all these MAGAts yelled "HE'S GONNA DRAIN THE SWAMP?"  There is literally no "swamp activity" left that he hasn't said is now super-duper fine and ok for fuckheads to do.  It's not just amazing that the idiots voted for him thinking that he would drain the swamp, what is amazing is that he is doing the 180 degree opposite....and the moron class think that means he's draining the swamp.  Dumbest.  Fucking.  Timeline.  Ever.

    He drained the swamp the same way Houston does. Clean it up and then deluge it with the next big hurricane. He’s Hurricane TFG. He drained the swamp and installed a bigger and better swamp that you’re not gonna believe!

    bluto

    Posted

    Not the least bit surprising but still insane, anm regents decision making is essentially fueled by Texas scorecard slop articles. I can’t help but wonder how many regents are active on the Texans politics forum

    “Is he a radical leftist?” Rudder Association President Matt Poling wrote in an email to two regents before Welsh was named permanent president. 

     

    https://www.texastribune.org/2023/12/12/mark-welsh-texas-am-president/

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