Waller County, near Houston, was the second fastest growing county in the U.S. Another three Texas counties were among the 10 fastest growing in U.S.  Population growth in Texas is slowing amid a decline in immigration — but the state’s suburbs continue to boom and lead the nation in adding new residents.   Texas’ population, now over 31 million, grew by 391,243 or 1.2% between July 1, 2024, and July 1, 2025, census data released Thursday show.   Much of the state’s growth in recent years has been in the suburbs outside Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Growth in the state’s most populous cities has started to slow, or in the case of Dallas County, decline. view article

A statue of Christopher Columbus has been erected outside of an ornate federal office building on the White House grounds — the latest sign of the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape cultural and historical representations across the nation’s capital.  The installation of the statue — which is a replica of one toppled in Baltimore during racial justice protests in 2020 — occurred over the weekend outside of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It comes as the Trump administration pushes forward with its efforts to bring back statues that were removed in the wake of the protests.  President Donald Trump, in a letter published by the Conference of Presidents of Major Italian American Organizations, praised the group for its “incredible generosity” in bringing the statue to Washington after the original was “torn down by anti-American rioters.” view article

4 views Feb 10, 2025 #news #DFW #dallas  The state’s top education official briefed state lawmakers in Austin Monday morning. The state of education in Texas is not the best. Texas spends below-average per student and is getting below-average results according to national standards. NBC 5's Phil Prazan reports with how lawmakers want to address the issue. ----   view article

There is a growing and disturbing trend of anti-intellectual elitism in American culture. It's the dismissal of science, the arts, and humanities and their replacement by entertainment, self-righteousness, ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason, says in an article in the Washington Post, "Dumbness, to paraphrase the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, has been steadily defined downward for several decades, by a combination of heretofore irresistible forces. These include the triumph of video culture over print culture; a disjunction between Americans' rising level of formal education and their shaky grasp of basic geography, science and history; and the fusion of anti-rationalism with anti-intellectualism."  view article

A Mississippi school district has been ordered to desegregate its schools after what the Justice Department called a five-decade-long legal battle. The Cleveland School District, about two hours northwest of Jackson, was told that it must consolidate its schools in order to provide real desegregation for students in the city of about 12,000. view article