Forming new opinions

Texas Tribune's "festival of ideas" brings leaders together to tackle state'sproblems

Energy Keynote: John Cornyn
An Energy Plan for Texas panel with Barry Smitherman, Jerry Patterson, James L.Keffer, & mod. John Ellis
Rep. Joe Deshotel looks over his festival schedule before heading over to hearsome early-morning energy policy at the Texas Tribune Festival.
Photo by Karen Brooks

Noisy and alcohol-soaked and covered in mud? Not even close. No live bands and not a single festival chair in sight.

But then again, a political “festival of ideas” is a little different from last weekend’s Austin City Limits. Nor is it the El Cosmico Trans-Pecos music festival in Marfa, from whence Giant Noise publicist Elaine Garza had just returned when she Tweeted the following on Saturday morning from the University of Texas AT&T Center:

“From Robert Plant to Cornyn. #mylifeisnuts #tribunefest”

“We don’t care which side of the issue they take. We want people to care enough to get together with their friends and neighbors, with people they agree with and disagree with, and really get to work fixing what needs to be fixed.”

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, was just one of more than 100 presenters converging on UT this weekend for the Texas Tribune Festival, a series of panel discussions and keynote speakers intended to instigate conversation on topics that touch the lives of just about every one of the 25 million people living in the Lone Star State. The four they chose: race and immigration, education, health and human services, and energy policy.

Hosted by the Texas Tribune, a two-year-old Austin-based nonprofit online news organization, the festival was born from an idea Tribune Editor and CEO Evan Smith had several years ago when he was at the helm of Texas Monthly. The idea tanked alongside the economy, as it dropped to the bottom of the priority list while the magazine struggled along with every other company in the country to survive, and Smith took it with him when he left TM and started the Tribune.

The festival’s mission, Smith said, is to motivate people to act and arm them with the knowledge to do so.

“We don’t care which side of the issue they take,” he said. “We want people to care enough to get together with their friends and neighbors, with people they agree with and disagree with, and really get to work fixing what needs to be fixed.”

Fairly bursting with excitement during his remarks to a drowsy bunch of coffee-drinking press types on site just after dawn on Saturday morning, Smith was already calling the event a success, saying the Tribune hosts some 80 events a year — those being the other part of the organization’s funding stream along with donations — but this one by far is the largest and most ambitious.

He didn’t mention why organizers, who included the team that runs SXSW, chose to call it a "festival." Presumably, it’s because the weekend of keynotes and presentations and Q+A panels and debates didn’t have enough of a target audience to call a “conference,” and it wasn’t introducing brand new concepts in the manner of a “symposium.”

The Tribune crew has been informally referring to it as a “festival of ideas,” and that may be the perfect name for it: A broad range of intellectual stimuli, debate fodder for the political-minded. No funnel cakes, but a veritable feast for the policy wonk’s brain.

And a cadre of local food trucks near the South Mall for anyone who wants to munch on Malaysian fare or tacos over a discussion on the future of the state’s water supply.

“This is a landmark day in Austin,” said UT President William Powers during opening remarks. “We gather for many things. We come together to gather for athletic events. People from come from all over the country and all over the world to gather in Austin, Texas for music events, SXSW, ACL. People come to the Texas Relays to gather for cultural and athletic competitions. Why not come to Austin, Texas, and gather for ideas? What a wonderful notion that is.”

UT student Jordan Humphreys, who scored a press pass and is blogging it on his Tumblr blog "techno-log" for a class, joked with his friends that they should get together and compare their schedules to see who was going to which show and whether they should try and hook up, “like ACL.”

Travis and Brett Grieg, both architects with a keen interest in energy issues due to their jobs, paid the $125 registration fee to attend the festival simply because it sounded like fun.

Right after Cornyn’s keynote energy speech, in which he focused on how DC regulations on energy companies just kill jobs, the young couple launched into a weighty discussion about socioeconomic psychology and experiments that showed people would do just about anything to keep someone else from getting ahead of them.

Weighty discussions for 9:30 am on a Saturday, when most people their age are just starting to identify the mysterious party bruises from the night before.

But that’s what a “festival of ideas” is all about, right? Nobody’s really making much news, but plenty of people are forming new opinions.

U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, R-Corpus Christi, took a jab from Charles Foster, a Houston-based corporate immigration consultant, for saying that simply because immigration is a federal issue, that does not mean local police shouldn’t enforce it. Bank robbery, Farenthold said, is a federal crime, too - but that doesn’t mean police won’t arrest a bank robber.

On the race and immigration panels in the AT&T Amphitheater, guest speakers ranged from Hispanic state lawmakers of both political parties sparring over whether Latinos were hammered on by budget cuts, to Alejandro Junco de la Vega, the editor of Grupo Reforma, the largest print news agency in Mexico, saying that his country was “bleeding” and decrying the “dreadful things” that were happening there.

U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, a Corpus Christi Republican, took a jab from Charles Foster, a Houston-based corporate immigration consultant, for saying that simply because immigration is a federal issue, that does not mean local police shouldn’t enforce it. Bank robbery, Farenthold said, is a federal crime, too - but that doesn’t mean police won’t arrest a bank robber.

“Should beat officers be required to ask, ‘Have you filed your federal tax return?’” Foster asked, to chuckles in the audience. “Taxes are a federal issue.”

Education experts and lawmakers traded barbs on a panel over how to fund education, with Rep. Scott Hochberg, D-Houston, making one of the most quoted observations of the afternoon:

“When the private sector lays off, it’s because the demand is down,” he said. “That’s not true” for education and the public sector.

Down the street at one of the energy panels, environmentalists complained that there were three Republicans and nobody representing them on a panel called “An Energy Plan for Texas.” They looked forward to a more balanced panel on Sunday featuring Public Citizen and the Environmental Defense Fund.

On the topic of health, Congressman Michael Burgess made his case against “Obamacare,” while panelists on Medicaid threw outhard numbers, including this: 63 percent of Texas Medicaid recipients are under the age of 18, some 20 percent of children in this state are uninsured, and that Texas Medicaid pays for half of all births in Texas.

Speakers on Saturday included several members of Congress as well as Tony Garza, former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, and Thomas Shannon, Jr., U.S. ambassador to Brazil.

The Texas Texas Tribune Festival continues Sunday.

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Preservation efforts

South Texas mission makes list of America’s most endangered historic places

Facebook/Friends of the Ruidosa Church

El Corazon Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesus in Ruidosa, Texas is considered an endangered place.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A historic South Texas mission joins the Stonewall National Monument, the President's House Site, and the Women's Rights National Historic Park among 11 sites on this year's annual list of the most endangered historic places in the United States compiled by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The 2026 list, announced Wednesday, May 20, marks America's 250th anniversary with the foundational principle that everyone is created equal as the theme, said Carol Quillen, president and CEO of the nonprofit organization. The 11 sites offer examples of how, over time, Americans have fought against injustice and for equality, she said.

“We wanted to think about those ideas, especially this notion that all human beings are created equal and find places, sometimes unsung places ... that not all Americans routinely think about," Quillen told The Associated Press.

The sites are spread across the United States — from New York and California on the East and West Coasts, to Alabama and Texas in the South, to Michigan in the Midwest and the Four Corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah in the Rocky Mountain West.

At least three of the sites — Stonewall, the El Corazon church in Texas, and President's House in Philadelphia — have been endangered by Trump administration actions.

“We want to save these places," Quillen said, “not just because the bricks and mortar is important but because the stories these places hold are important."

For the first time since the list debuted in 1988, each site on the 2026 list will receive a one-time $25,000 grant to help highlight their connections to the principle that all people are created equal and address the threats they face.

The 11 sites are:

Ruidosa, Texas: El Corazon Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesus
The more than century-old adobe church served as a refuge and place of worship for Mexican and Mexican American farming communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border along the Rio Grande River. Vacant since the 1950s, the structure has benefited from continued restoration provided by the nonprofit Friends of the Ruidosa Church but remains threatened by proposed construction of a U.S. border wall that could come within a few hundred yards of the property. (The nonprofit has posted an official statement and more information about the border wall here.) Ruidosa is in far west Texas, roughly 35 miles northwest of Presidio and 46 miles southwest of Marfa, near the rugged Chinati Mountains.

A historic photograph of El Corazon Sagrado de la Iglesia de Jesus.Facebook/Friends of the Ruidosa Church

Montgomery, Alabama: Ben Moore Hotel
The hotel was a refuge for Black people living under laws that enforced racial separation in the South. Prolonged vacancy has caused structural deterioration and the historic Centennial Hill neighborhood surrounding it faces pressure from development. The hotel housed key players from the Civil Rights Movement, including the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy. The Conservation Fund announced in November that it would help preserve the hotel.

Modoc County, California: Tule Lake Segregation Center
Initially known as the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, it was set up as a camp but later became a segregation center where Japanese Americans who were thought to be disloyal to the United States were imprisoned. The site is now a national monument managed by the National Park Service. Only 37 acres of the 1,100-acre site is protected. Most of it is at risk of permanent alteration from a proposed nearby construction project.

California: Angel Island Immigration Station
It was the largest immigration port on the West Coast between 1910 and 1940, particularly for immigrants from Asia and the Pacific. Hundreds of thousands were processed, detained and/or interrogated there because of their race. The station currently is threatened by physical, environmental, political and economic factors. Additional funding is needed for structural repairs and programming to increase awareness.

Somerset, Massachusetts: Swansea Friends Meeting House
Recognized as the oldest surviving Quaker meeting house in the state, it was built in 1701 to serve as a refuge by a congregation fleeing religious persecution and looking for a safe place to worship. The building has been closed for years and needs significant rehabilitation.

Michigan: Detroit Association of Women's Clubs
Founded in 1921, the association was one of the first Black organizations in Detroit to own their headquarters building, which was purchased in 1941. But the building has been closed since 2024, when water pipes burst and damaged the interior. Money is needed to help the association reopen the building.

New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, Utah: Greater Chaco Cultural Landscape
The landscape is an ancestral homeland sustained for over a millennium by the Pueblo and Hopi people, but is threatened by changes to federal land policy that could open up significant portions to oil and gas development. Permanent protections and tribal consultation are needed to protect its cultural integrity.

Seneca Falls, New York: Women's Rights National Historical Park
The park tells the story of the first Women's Rights Convention, held in Seneca Falls, in July 1848. It faces a deferred maintenance backlog of over $10 million. Additional funding and support are needed to help preserve the park as a place to teach visitors about the history of women's rights.

New York: Stonewall National Monument
The first and only U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ+ history was the subject of administration actions that saw the rainbow Pride flag removed from its flagpole earlier this year before it was restored. The National Park Service had removed the flag in February, citing federal guidance that limited the agency to displaying only the American, Interior Department and POW/MIA flags. But the administration reversed course in April as it agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by advocacy and historic preservation groups that sought to block the flag's removal at the Manhattan site.

After Trump returned to office, he ended diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and many references to transgender people were excised from the Stonewall monument’s website and materials. The Republican administration similarly has put national parks, museums and landmarks under a messaging microscope, aiming to remove or alter materials that it says are “divisive or partisan” or “inappropriately disparage Americans.”

Philadelphia: The President's House Site
The administration abruptly removed exhibits on the lives of nine people enslaved at the site in the 1790s under George Washington, the first U.S. president, who lived there when Philadelphia served as the nation's capital. The exhibits were taken down as part of a broad effort by the administration to remove from federal properties information it deems “disparaging” to Americans. The issue is currently the subject of litigation between the city and federal government.

Heath Springs, South Carolina: Hanging Rock Revolutionary War Battlefield
The Battle of Hanging Rock was a key battle in the Southern Campaigns of the Revolutionary War and is considered a Patriot victory that helped boost morale and ultimately weaken British control in South Carolina. Only portions of the core battlefield are protected and open to the public, with the area anticipating population growth and increasing development pressures.