Cowboy Who?

Even some of his most passionate supporters were surprised by the number of votes Democrat Taylor Rehmet received in the November special election for Texas Senate District 9. 

His competitors, Republicans Leigh Wambsganss and John Huffman, each had mountains of cash and the backing of major PACs and political players across Texas. Even so, Rehmet, an Air Force Veteran and president of the state’s International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter, won nearly 48 percent of the vote—nearly enough for an outright win.

The Tarrant County seat, which covers the suburbs of Keller, North Richland Hills, and Southlake, plus part of Fort Worth, was left open by longtime Republican state Senator Kelly Hancock, who resigned earlier this year to become the acting state comptroller. Last year, President Trump won that same district by 17 points. 

“That is not something you might’ve seen as recently as two cycles ago,” said Jason Villalba, a former North Texas Republican legislator who now runs a think tank focused on Latino voters, citing the area’s growing diversity. Backlash to the right-wing Republican candidates was another reason, experts say. 

Now, the January 31 runoff pits Rehmet against Wambsganss, a conservative activist and executive with Patriot Mobile, the Christian nationalist cell phone carrier in North Texas. It’s a race that encapsulates the most turbulent political storylines in Tarrant County, statewide and nationally. The special election in a solid-red district is the sort of off-cycle contest that, in the Trump era, serves as a bellwether for the national political climate. That’s especially so in this district, smack dab in the largest battleground county in Texas. 

“As Tarrant County goes, so goes Texas,” former Trump consigliere Steve Bannon, who is stumping for Wambsganss, recently said on his podcast. “And as Texas goes, so goes the world.”

EJ Carrion, a progressive activist based in Fort Worth, was chilled by those words from the one-time Trump strategist. He was also motivated. “If Tarrant County is the battleground for a democracy, then Fort Worth is the front lines,” he said. 

It would be difficult to find a more far-right candidate than Wambsganss, who was an architect of the Southlake ISD school board takeover. (Wambsganss’ campaign did not respond to the Texas Observer’s questions for this story.)  

In 2020, she co-founded Southlake Families PAC, which funded school board candidates who killed the school district’s anti-racism plans. Patriot Mobile, where Wambsganss works as chief communications officer, has a PAC that also bankrolled right-wing school board candidates in Southlake, Grapevine, Keller, and Mansfield. 

Wambsganss’ politics are part of an increasingly powerful hardline faction in Tarrant County Republican politics, which has long been a hotbed for right-wingers. In the November election, she bested Southlake Mayor John Huffman, who had backing from more establishment elements of the state GOP as well as with big-money casino interests. The True Texas Project, whose endorsement Wambsganss lists on her website, is an influential Tarrant County-based organization that once claimed there is a “war on white America.”

Brian Mayes, a local Republican strategist, said Wambsganss’ failure to best Rehmet and secure the 50 percent necessary to avoid a runoff shows that people, including some GOP voters, are fed up with the school board controversies that have dominated North Texas politics in recent years. Candidates backed by Patriot Mobile’s PAC suffered big losses in the May 2025 elections, Mayes pointed out.  

“I think their policies were so extreme, they caused so much trouble on the school board, that in just a short time period, voters were like, ‘Okay, yeah, we’ve seen enough. We’re done,’” Mayes said. 

Rehmet agrees that he couldn’t have done as well as he did in the November race without some Republican voters casting ballots for him. In an interview with the Observer, Rehmet said that his opponent’s background creates a stark contrast in the runoff. “This is about values. If you look at me and you look at my opponent, we have totally different values. It’s about who’s going to answer to donors and who’s going to answer to the people.”

Still, Rehmet heads into the runoff at a significant monetary disadvantage, according to the last campaign finance reports from November. He raised $160,000—with his largest contribution coming from the Machinist union’s PAC at $15,000—and ended with less than $47,000. 

As of that same date, Wambsganss had spent over $1.3 million and received a total of $2.2 million. (The next campaign reports are not due until a week before the special election.)

Her top donor is Texans United for a Conservative Majority, which is financed by far-right megadonors Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks and provided over $400,000 to her campaign. She also received more than $350,000 from a PAC funded in part by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and another $300,000 from the Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC.

Mayes, the Republican strategist, said he expects even more money to pour into both sides of the race during the runoff—especially in its final weeks. “I think their plan is to not change any policy positions and to just double down on the spending,” Mayes said of the Wambsganss camp. With their spending, he added, the goal will be “to overwhelm the Democrat opponent with door knockers, texting, phone calls, the usual stuff you need to do in a runoff. … And I think she’ll go even more negative.”

Meanwhile, Alexander Montalvo, a longtime grassroots organizer in Tarrant County, says “people power”—local organizing and get-out-the-vote messaging, for instance—was the key to Rehmet’s first success. It’s the key to the runoff, too. 

“The most powerful thing that we will ever have is people,” he said. “I mean, our vote is powerful. Our dollars are powerful. All these assets we have that we can utilize are powerful, but nothing’s more powerful than just people.” 

Rehmet also emphasized how eager he is to reach across partisan lines. He’s spent months canvassing and making phone calls, he said, and that means regular conversations with conservatives and registered Republicans. “I couldn’t have gotten 48 percent if I didn’t have conservatives believe in wanting something different,” he said. 

During her campaign, Wambsganss has largely focused on two issues: property taxes and public safety. In a November interview with CBS, she talked at length about giving Texans “property tax relief” and increasing the homestead exemption. Wambsganss’ website says she wants to ensure public schools are fully funded; it also touts her role in “one of the most impactful fights against Critical Race Theory in the country, advancing parental rights and transparency in education.” On election night in November, Wambsganss told the local CBS News affiliate: “My message has been consistent. I have over thirty years of fighting for faith, family, and freedom.”

She added, “Texans are really, really sick and tired of being taxed out of their homes. Texans want secure borders. They want to support their first responders. And all parents in Texas want a good education for their kids. And the Republican message and the conservative policies and laws are good for all Texans.”

For his part, Rehmet told the Observer that he wants to increase teacher pay and hire more teaching assistants, as well as crack down on corporate price-gouging and expand access to affordable healthcare and childcare. But first, he’ll have to win the January 31 runoff, then be elected once again later in 2026 before beginning a full state Senate term the following year.

Supporters like Carrion know they’re in for a difficult fight in the weeks ahead, especially since powerful right-wing political machines—at the local, state, and national levels—are lining up behind Wambsganss. Carrion finds it particularly frustrating that the Fort Worth Professional Firefighters Association, a labor union, endorsed Wambsganss instead of the candidate with strong union bona fides. 

“They endorsed the book ban lady,” he said. “Like Fahrenheit 451. Do we remember what firefighters did? They burned books. It’s a little too real.” 

The post Could This State Senate Runoff Be a Tipping Point for Tarrant County? appeared first on The Texas Observer.

President Donald Trump’s deadly invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president could be an unusually clear example of “blood for oil.” The president has nearly said as much himself. But one hitch is that Houston’s oil giants don’t immediately appear eager to buy what Trump is selling.

Following the administration’s military coup, Trump suggested he may go so far as to use U.S. tax dollars to directly reimburse the nation’s largest oil firms for the billions they’d need to invest to repair and modernize the South American country’s dilapidated oil and gas infrastructure. The offer ups the ante on officials’ previous pledge, made in the days running up to the seizure of Nicolás Maduro, to compensate Big Oil firms for assets previously nationalized by the Venezuelan state in exchange for the companies’ investment.

White House officials, including Energy Secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright, are set to meet again with executives of ExxonMobil, ConocoPhilips, and Chevron—three Big Oil companies all headquartered in Houston—on Friday to discuss further incentives to cajole them to open their pocket books in Venezuela.

On Tuesday, Trump announced the United States is receiving between 30 and 50 million barrels of blockaded Venezuelan crude stranded in oil tankers and storage facilities—about two days’ U.S. supply—as part of a move to both choke off exports to China and increase pressure on interim president and former oil minister Delcy Rodríguez to give U.S. oil firms what Trump has called “total access” to Venezuela’s oil fields.

But Venezuela’s long history of countering U.S. imperial oil adventurism and sanctions—and resulting political instability—goes a long way toward explaining why Big Oil firms need such incredible assurances to entice them back into the country that hosts the globe’s largest proven oil reserves.

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Standard Oil of New Jersey, which would later become ExxonMobil, began its involvement in Venezuela during World War I, with Chevron and Gulf Oil later following suit. Despite Standard’s best efforts to combat increasing moves toward oil-worker unionization and industry nationalization, U.S. companies were forced to begin divvying up their profits with the government in the early 1940s after Venezuelan President Eleazar López Contreras’ signing of the Hydrocarbons Law.

Venezuela played a formative role in the creation of the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1960, and by 1976 President Carlos Andrés Pérez had nationalized Venezuela’s oil industry. Still, Andrés Pérez left an opening for U.S. involvement by allowing Exxon, ConocoPhilips, and Chevron to operate jointly with Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the nation’s new state-owned oil company, known as PDVSA.

Luis Duno-Gottberg, the Lee Hage Jamail Professor of Latin American Studies at Rice University, told the Texas Observer in an email that those loopholes left detrimental operational practices, foreign partnerships, and technological dependence largely in place, rendering “nationalization more administrative than transformative”—critiques that resurfaced under President Hugo Chávez.

Chávez restructured PDSVA after his political opposition led a general strike at the state oil company following military dissidents’ aborted 2002 coup attempt that ousted Chávez for two days before he was swiftly returned to power. Following the 2002 strike and putsch, Duno-Gottberg says Chavez raised oil royalties and taxes and restructured PDVSA’s management, redirecting oil revenues toward domestic social priorities, including health, education, and poverty reduction. Chavez further limited private participation in 2007, mandating that all oil ventures relinquish majority ownership to PDVSA. That’s when Exxon and ConocoPhilips jumped ship, and their assets were turned over to the state.

Duno-Gottberg told the Observer that U.S. sanctions and Chavez’s restructuring of PDVSA is a major reason why Venezuela’s oil industry fell into disrepair. The 2002-03 oil strike, and Chavez’s response, exemplifies the way oil has been used as both political weapon and tool, he said. The strike led to the dismissal of thousands of experienced engineers, managers, and operators, effectively “draining the state oil company of institutional memory and technical capacity,” Duno-Gottberg said; at the same time when Chávez’s opponents were attempting to stymie production to strong-arm political change.

“Over time, corruption, weak management, and rigid controls became entrenched, and later U.S. and international sanctions further restricted access to capital, spare parts, and export markets,” Duno-Gottberg told the Observer. “The cumulative effect was clear: declining production, rising accidents, and a system held together by improvisation rather than expertise, until what had once been one of the world’s most professional oil industries could no longer reliably sustain itself.”

That’s why Exxon and ConocoPhilips, at least, are likely to require more assurances from the Trump administration to mitigate against the political risks of a venture with a long history of expropriations, legal disputes, shifting rules, and political instability.

Beyond politics, the economics may also make little sense: There is already a global oil glut from OPEC+ countries, including Venezuela, and there’s no telling whether prices will rise enough to make upgrades, which will take years, profitable. In fact, Trump’s Tuesday acquisition of Venezuela’s stranded barrels tanked gas prices, already the lowest they’ve been since at least March 2021, even further. The average cost of a U.S. barrel fell to $56 and the average retail price per gallon remains $2.81, according to AAA.

Moreover, Venezuelan oil is heavy enough that it’s comparable to Canadian tar sands, making it costly to extract and refine due to the need for diluents. Only a small number of Houston refineries are properly equipped to handle it. Neighboring Guyana’s crude, meanwhile, is considered light and sweet, on par with that of Texas’ Permian Basin. As Amy Westervelt has pointed out, Trump’s toppling of Maduro more likely works to shield Exxon’s interest in Guyana, where Maduro had been aggressively staking claims, than to persuade the company to immediately re-enliven Venezuela’s playing fields.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods told Bloomberg in November that, “We’ve been expropriated from Venezuela two different times,” in response to a question about whether the company would tap Venezuela’s oil. “We’d have to see what the economics look like.”

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But the economics might not be a problem for at least one Houston oil major. Chevron made an altogether different bet after Chávez closed Venezuela’s oil fields to private participation in 2007. Choosing to manage political risk instead of flee, Chevron remains the only U.S. oil company involved in Venezuela, benefitting from a special license that has allowed it to get around U.S. sanctions. The company’s operations currently account for about 17 percent of Venezuela’s current extraction.

Chevron released a statement almost immediately after the news of Maduro’s capture, signaling its willingness to fully back Trump’s naked imperial oil grab. “With more than a century in Venezuela, we support a peaceful, lawful transition that promotes stability and economic recovery,” the company said. “We’re prepared to work constructively with the U.S. Government during this period, leveraging our experience and presence to strengthen U.S. energy security.”

Environmental lawyer and human rights activist Steven Donziger knows a thing or two about Chevron’s track record in Latin America. Chevron withdrew its assets in Ecuador after European courts awarded Donziger’s clients—Indigenous tribes and farmers—$9.5 billion in damages for Texaco’s environmental devastation of the Amazon Rainforest. Chevron, which acquired Texaco in 1999, refused to pay the settlement and, through its law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, sued Donziger for allegedly obtaining the Ecuadorian ruling by means of racketeering.

The decades-long legal battle ultimately landed Donziger in federal prison and on house arrest after a separate, Chevron-connected law firm was appointed to prosecute him for allegedly violating court orders in a contempt-of-court case presided over by a Chevron-funded Federalist Society member.

Chevron, Donziger told the Observer, is in the best position to exploit the administration’s imperialism. “In a weird way, it could really happen, because the Maduro government—Delcy Rodríguez and the new current leadership—it’s in their interest to generate revenue too, right?”

Still, he said, even for Chevron, Venezuela’s oil fields are a longer-term play given the amount of risk and uncertainty.

“Chevron will be the leader and the most astute operator in this ever-changing, very dynamic playing field. They’re good at this. … There’s a reason they’re the only company in Venezuela. There’s a reason that they got away with mass environmental ecocide in Ecuador,” Donziger said. “They’ll be right there at the forefront, but it’s complicated.”

Both Donziger and Duno-Gottberg see the Trump administration’s oil grab as more about keeping Venezuela’s reserves from Cuba and China, while reasserting U.S. hegemony over the Western hemisphere, than pure profit-seeking. After all, before his capture, for instance, Maduro had already offered Trump a majority stake in both his country’s oil and mineral reserves. 

“When Venezuela signaled a willingness to deepen trade in Chinese currency and further integrate with China, it touched a much larger nerve than barrels per day,” said Duno-Gottberg. And the move may also allow the Trump administration to assert additional pressure on Mexico, Colombia, and Greenland. 

What’s largely lost in all this, of course, is the fact that the world still faces a climate emergency that is being fueled by the very resource the Trump administration is so determined to plunder. In fact, new climate data shows 2025 was one of the three hottest years on record—becoming the first year that global average temperatures broke the Paris Agreement’s threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

Venezuela’s current extraction rates account for at least 0.4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and its untapped reserves effectively amount to yet another climate bomb at a time when the International Energy Agency has warned against any new investment in oil and gas infrastructure.

Funneling Venezuela’s oil reserves into the atmosphere would not only further accelerate planetary warming, it would likely accelerate impacts on the very city that U.S. oil majors call home: Houston. The city saw more days over 90 degrees last year than ever before, and accelerating heat waves and hurricanes, like 2017’s Hurricane Harvey, are increasingly presenting their own risks to the city’s oil and gas infrastructure.

“The conversation about climate has been, in my opinion, a major casualty of the Trump chaos,” Donziger told the Observer. “The invasion of Venezuela and the extraction of Maduro is an example of really how little the climate issue holds sway anymore on the world stage. It really is up to people to do something about it.”

The post Why Houston Oil Majors Are Hesitant to Go All In on Venezuela appeared first on The Texas Observer.

In brief: In today’s post we note Tuesday’s record high temperature, and the potential for more today. We also discuss the possibility of thunderstorms on Friday and Friday night as a front pushes into the area. Following this front winter should stick around for awhile.

Record high update

Houston has now set two record highs in 2026. On January 2, the high of 84 degrees broke the old record of 81 degrees, set in 1965 and 2000. And yesterday, January 6, the high of 82 degrees broke the previous mark of 80 degrees set in 1956 and 1989. Today will be close, with a forecast high about on par with the record of 81 degrees, set back in 2023.

Wednesday

We are once again seeing fog this morning, as dewpoints and temperatures have both fallen into the mid-60s. These soupy conditions will be with us into Friday before a front pushes through. After the fog clears we should have mostly sunny skies later today with highs around 80 degrees. Winds will be light, generally from the southwest. Lows tonight will again only drop into the 60s, with mostly cloudy skies.

Thursday

This will be a cloudy and humid day, with highs ranging from the upper 70s to around 80 degrees for most locations. There will be a couple things of note. First of all winds will surge from the south in response to a nearby front, gusting up to 25 or perhaps even 30 mph. These winds will be highest on Thursday afternoon. We also will have a slight chance, perhaps 20 or 30 percent, of light rain during the afternoon and early evening hours. Thursday night will be warm and muggy again.

Friday and Friday night

We can’t say precisely what will happen Friday night, but generally I expect a warm and humid day, similar to Thursday with mostly cloudy skies. However, rain chances will be higher on Friday than Thursday, with scattered mostly light to moderate showers. There is also a chance for severe weather, primarily in the form of thunderstorms. This is most likely to occur between late evening on Friday and sunrise on Saturday, as the front itself moves into the Houston region. This is when we could see some briefly heavier rainfall. Most of our modeling is all over the place, but some locations could pick up 0.5 to 1 inch of rain whereas other locations see hundredths of an inch. We all need some rain, so good luck everyone.

Saturday

This will be mostly cloudy and cooler day, with a few showers possibly lingering during the morning hours. Temperatures at midnight will likely be in the 60s for most locations, falling to the 50s at sunrise and then staying there throughout the day. Skies will be mostly cloudy with modestly gusty northerly winds, perhaps up to 25 mph or so before ebbing during the late afternoon or early evening.

Sunday

Sunday morning will be cold. Start line temperatures at the Houston Marathon should be in the mid-40s, with dry air and mostly cloudy skies. Winds will be from the north at 5 to 10 mph, with slightly higher gusts. Rain chances are basically zero. Highs will likely climb into the upper 50s for most locations on Sunday afternoon. Sunday night will be chilly, with lows falling to around 40 degrees for most of Houston, with cooler conditions still for inland areas. A freeze is very unlikely, however.

Next week

Houston will feel like winter next week with highs generally in the 60s and lows mostly in the low- to mid-40s for much of the week. Skies should be partly sunny most days, with low rain chances. This pattern should prevail through the middle of the month.

That was really cool how all the huts blew up ‘n stuff. Honey?

A Federal Communications Commission proposal to let state and local prisons jam contraband cell phones has support from Republican attorneys general and prison phone companies but faces opposition from wireless carriers that say it would disrupt lawful communications. Groups dedicated to Wi-Fi and GPS also raised concerns in comments to the FCC.

"Jamming will block all communications, not just communications from contraband devices," wireless lobby group CTIA said in December 29 comments in response to Chairman Brendan Carr's proposal. The CTIA said that "jamming blocks all communications, including lawful communications such as 911 calling," and argued that the FCC "has no authority to allow jamming."

CTIA members AT&T and Verizon expressed their displeasure in separate comments to the FCC. "The proposed legal framework is based on a flawed factual premise," AT&T wrote.

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Comments

All you have to do is watch the crystal ... and almost instantaneously you'll find your hand in .. of ... uh ... #CowboyWho

A reader writes:

I am in a front-line commercial role at a tech start-up. I am responsible for bringing in new business, and this story pertains to my colleague Zayne, who manages a lot of the back-end, integrations side of things.

Zayne is fantastic at what he does. The guy might actually be a genius, and I don’t say that lightly. He has a ton of ideas, seems to really love what he does, and is good at it. He’s also very open about his mental health, which I admire but it can admittedly take me back sometimes. I grew up in a family where we often don’t share things like that, and it’s something I’m trying to unpack as an adult, but even so I find myself at a loss for words when Zayne will share details about his mental state that I’d struggle to open up about to my closest friends. When I met him a week into joining the company, he told me he’d previously been suicidal. I’m aware that mindset may be coloring my judgment here.

We just had a major tradeshow, which is important for us as events are our biggest source of leads. While I’m the only person whose job description is to bring in business, these events are really all-hands on deck. Zayne came along too and, while he isn’t commercially minded, he does know everything there is to know about the product so he’s great to have in case conversations get too technical. At one point in the event, there were only two of us on the stand, and I was speaking to a lot of people passing by whereas Zayne was hanging back, which I get as he’s not in his element the way I am at these events, though it was annoying to see potential clients slip away when I was engaged in talking.

At one point, I started a conversation with two senior leaders. I was trying to uncover what their pain points were and if we were a fit, as well as build rapport. Zayne joined my conversation, which to be honest I didn’t need as I wanted to guide it a specific way, but I wasn’t about to tell him to back off in front of the two prospects. They were talking about their workplace initiatives and mentioned they supported mental health awareness. I was going to mention what our own software does to support this, but Zayne jumped in and started talking about his own mental health, mentioning that he’d experienced a dissociative episode on route to the conference and how he’d been struggling with this for years. I found this super inappropriate and was basically stunned into silence because of how uncomfortable I was. The two prospects began comforting him, but I sensed from their tone and body language that they were also taken off-guard by this and didn’t really know what to say, and he just kept going.

The conversation came back round to work eventually and Zayne had some valuable insight on the technical side of things. After they left and I gathered their details, he turned to me and said brightly, “Wow, that went great!” I wasn’t sure what to say so I just agreed, but I wanted to kick him for being so oblivious. It’s one thing saying that to me as a coworker, but I felt it was inappropriate to say something that personal to strangers, never mind strangers we want to sell to.

I’m not sure whether I should mention this to our boss. I don’t know how much of my view on this is colored by my own discomfort, but also because I know how important it is for us as a start-up to get new clients in — and quite frankly that could have cost me commission. Should I mention it? If so, how? Now that we’re growing, we don’t necessarily need all of us on the stand but I know Zayne enjoys these events. I also don’t want to shame him for having mental health issues. Is there a way to tactfully bring it up? Should I?

Yeah, you should talk to your boss and share what happened and your sense that the prospective clients weren’t entirely comfortable.

In an ideal world, your boss would talk forthrightly with Zayne about boundaries when he’s representing the company. Your boss may or may not be a good enough manager to do that skillfully, but I do think you need to let her know what happened since you witnessed it firsthand and particularly since part of your job is managing prospect relationships and this risks impacting them.

The idea isn’t to reinforce a stigma around mental health, but rather to reinforce the idea that there’s a time and place for some topics. Your colleagues also shouldn’t be talking about politics, religion, or sex with business contacts, or going into heavy detail about a medical condition or their divorce or their estrangement from their family. It’s not that those topics are taboo or wrong or that they’re inappropriate across the board; it’s that they’re inappropriate in a business setting — because they risk alienating people who feel differently, are too heavy for a work context, and take the focus way off the thing you want it on. It’s not just the latter, of course — you might have an in-depth conversation about, I don’t know, sports as a way of building rapport with a client — it’s that they’re not what people are expecting (or, usually, wanting) in a work context and have a high risk of bringing people down.

A lot of people understand this intuitively — especially people in a relationship-heavy job like yours — but others don’t and need explicit coaching on it.

The post should I talk to my boss about my coworker’s oversharing about mental health? appeared first on Ask a Manager.

A reader writes:

My job is 99% remote with some on-site event expectations. On-site events are typically mandatory, which is fine with me.

I recently asked for events to be either predictable (e.g., first Friday in August) or to have lots of notice, so we can schedule vacations or things like dental cleanings around those events.

During the conversation, my manager said that even when we were fully on-site, she sometimes had to move appointments if her boss scheduled a meeting. She gave the example of a short-notice 9 am meeting the next day and thus needing to move her kids’ appointments.

That gave me pause. I understand rescheduling things like haircuts or some types of personal commitments, but it’s so hard to schedule physicals, dental cleanings, some medical imaging, etc. that I’d be hard pressed to move those for a work event.

Likewise, she said we don’t need to cancel flights for work events, but it was kind of implied that if you have a PTO day planned but aren’t going anywhere (maybe for your birthday or a hobby day) you should plan to attend the work event instead.

This won’t come up often, maybe a few times a year, but the emphasis on work taking priority over pre-planned PTO gave me the ick. Am I overreacting? Is this typical? If this isn’t normal, how can I protect my own time away from the office in a professional way?

P.S. I don’t know if it matters, but I’m salaried (not hourly) and I have vacation time to draw from. On-site events are generally team-building and networking; my job is desk-work, not anything like patient care or politics where a meeting would be an emergency.

No, this is weird! People aren’t normally expected to reschedule appointments that have already been booked and time off approved just because their boss wants to have a short-notice meeting that day or an event comes up afterwards.

There are some exceptions to this — a truly crucial meeting that for some reason can’t be put off, or an event that’s a central part of your job to be at. But those would be unusual exceptions, not normal practice. And even then, the conflict would normally be acknowledged and discussed (“I’m so sorry, I know you’re scheduled to be out that day but this is our only shot at saving this account — any chance you’d be able to rearrange things to make it?”); you wouldn’t be expected to just see the conflict and decide on your own to cancel your already-set plans. (An exception to that might be if you’re in a very senior role and you would be expected to know on your own that this was the only shot at saving the account and take the initiative to act accordingly.)

But for more routine meetings? The normal response to that is, “I’m out that day; would Thursday or Friday work instead?”

However, while your boss is being incredibly weird and her expectations are not in sync with normal professional expectations, if these are her expectations you have to figure out how to navigate them. The easiest thing is to just assert normal professional boundaries, meaning that if you get the sense she’s expecting you to be present for something you won’t be available for (again, assuming it’s not a rare high-states exception), you’d simply say, “I have an appointment I can’t move that day,” followed by whatever makes sense next (which could be “I can see if Jane can fill in” or “could we schedule it for Thursday when I’m back?” or so forth). If she pushes back, you’d say, “It’s a medical appointment that can’t be moved” or “it would be really tough for me to change it; are there other options?” or otherwise assert the boundary that no, pre-scheduled things can’t be moved without true (and rare) need.

If she takes issue with that, I’d think about your options for escalating it because, unless you’ve seen direct evidence that this is the culture of your whole office and not just your boss’s idiosyncrasy, it’s highly likely that your employer doesn’t want her interfering with people’s time off this way. If you have good rapport with her boss, it might be something you could ask their guidance on (“asking their guidance” is a good way of bringing it to their attention without explicitly complaining about it). Or in some offices, HR might be well positioned to step in.

But you shouldn’t accept this as a normal thing.

The post my boss says you should always move personal appointments for work appeared first on Ask a Manager.

Here’s the receipt for your Depends.

The Trump administration sharply cut the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule from 17 to 11 recommended shots, with health experts warning that changes were made without an adequate review and will only confuse parents and clinicians. What do you think?

The post CDC Scales Back Child Vaccine Schedule appeared first on The Onion.

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Hovertext:
I recently discovered that many kids today don't even know about cooties. Thank goodness for all those shots.

Today's News:

The Dallas-area appeals court reversed a fentanyl dealing conviction because there's no evidence the jury had 12 people. There's also no evidence of when or why the case was assigned to another judge.

From Betty Boop to "The Maltese Falcon," the new year brings a wealth of new works into the public domain.

FYE closed its single Houston location in Katy Mills Mall last week, ending the chain’s local presence for the second time. What would eventually become FYE opened its first Texas store at the Galleria in 1992. It was marketed under the dual names Record Town and Saturday Matinee and was one of many chains trying to corner the market in both media sales and rentals at the time. The company would continue to grow by ...

The lawsuit, filed on Monday in Travis County, accuses the two organizations of negligence for allegedly providing the 19-year-old with an excessive amount of alcoholic beverages on the evening before her death.

The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday finalized a tentative opinion issued in September that no longer requires soon-to-be lawyers to attend a law school accredited by the American Bar Association. The power to approve those law schools now rests with the state's highest civil court.

Five years later, the U.S. Capitol is still living with the aftermath of Jan. 6. Geoff Bennett discussed how the insurrection's impact continues to reverberate in Washington with Lisa Desjardins and Liz Landers.

In the five years since Jan. 6, there has been a widespread fight over the story of that day. Congressional Correspondent Lisa Desjardins was inside the Capitol and witnessed the storming firsthand and reports on the half-decade battle over the narrative.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Internship offered me a special project but now I can’t get any answers about it

I’m a college student who recently finished a remote internship at a prominent company in a fairly niche field (the company has maybe 10-15 full-time employees). My main task was fairly generic — think setting up a filing system or similar — but I also got a lot of experience in the actual field. Towards the latter end of it, I had a great talk with the CEO about what I wanted out of the internship, and what was really exciting was that he said that he thought a good next step for me would be designing an accessory for one of their products. That sounded great to me, and I said so. He told me to get back to him with some ideas for products that I wanted to make an accessory to, and that he would meet in a week or two with some of the designers to talk about what they thought and hash out the plan for this.

That was about one and a half months ago. I sent some messages after that attempting to follow up. Initially he just hadn’t gotten around to the meeting yet, which was fine, and said I should send him what product I was interested in working on, but then he didn’t respond to that. Once my internship wrapped up I sent a message thanking him for the internship, and saying that I would be more busy but still available during the school year and would love to work on other projects with the company. He replied saying it was great to have me there for the summer, but also that he was not sure what would be next with regards to project work as they are still figuring out what things will look like in 2026. I sent one more message a week and a half later, saying that I’d love to talk more about the accessory design project and once again affirming that I am free despite being in school, which I haven’t gotten a response to.

I have been in intermittent contact for other reasons with one of the designers who was my boss during the internship, and a few weeks ago I asked if the CEO had gotten a chance to talk to him and the other designer about the design opportunity, or if plans had changed. He said he would remind the CEO about it … and I haven’t heard anything about it since.

Should I send yet another message to the CEO asking about this? I don’t want to come off as pushy or badgering, considering I’ve already sent him at least four messages about it, but this would also a really exciting opportunity for me. I think it’s very possible that plans changed or he realized that he wouldn’t be able to actually offer me this opportunity, at least not right now, which I would understand. But in that case, I would just like to at least hear that, rather than continue getting radio silence.

It’s probably not happening right now, for whatever reason. I would not continue to message the CEO since four messages makes your interest really clear and the ball is now pretty firmly in his court. The one thing I think you could do, though, is to message your boss from the internship again and say something like, “I’m not going to keep bothering Cecil about this since I haven’t heard back and I’m guessing it’s just not something he can move forward with right now, but if you do think there’s anything else I should do on my end, please let me know! I’d love the opportunity if it might still be possible, but I realize it might not be.” But after that, I’d assume they’re just not able to make it come together right now.

2. Should we not hire two candidates with wet t-shirt contest photos online?

I’m hiring for the restaurant and bar at a golf course, and we recently have had two openings for servers. We’ve had trouble finding suitable candidates until recently, when two university students who are both friends applied and interviewed back to back. They are literally the perfect candidates who we believe have the skills to help our team.

Upon checking their online history, however, we found out that last year they were overseas at a hostel and they joined a wet t-shirt contest. The hostel and nightclub posted some images on their website, with them both showing off their butts in thongs and also removing their shirts entirely, showing their breasts to the crowd. They actually finished first and second in the contest, and kudos to them! Personally, I don’t have an issue with this and I see it as good fun. I don’t see how this would impact the reputation of our golf course in any way, as the customers will not know and, even if they did, it’s not like they would view this as something the golf course was then up too. I really don’t think it matters. Neither does the other hiring manager, but they are hesitant because they “just know if you find something like that, you are not supposed to hire them.”

Do you think we should just hire these wonderful women who seem to be the right fit for our job openings or do you think the fact that their butts and boobs happen to be on a hostel website from overseas matter and we should pass? I personally think in today’s times that this sort of thing is okay and I think the other manager is living 20 years ago still.

You should hire them. Tell the other manager that the advice she’s heard is outdated and it only ever applied to certain types of jobs anyway (like jobs like teaching, where public image has traditionally been a big concern). It never applied to the majority of jobs, and it has zero bearing on their ability to do the work you need done.

3. Can I ask to use a “free” day off at a different time?

I work full-time in local government, in a small office of 12. Recently, our boss sent out an email announcing that as a thank-you for our hard work over the past year, she was giving us all one “free” day of personal vacation. We were all told to look at the calendar to see which day we were assigned to take off.

While I appreciate the thought, I was actually hoping I could bank the day off and use it towards a vacation later in the month I was already approved to take. Alternately, I wanted to ask to use my “free” vacation date on my birthday, also later this month.

Would you advise asking our boss if I could use the free day she is giving us towards another vacation or on another day? I don’t want to seem ungrateful or look at gift horse in the mouth, but the day I am assigned to be off is not a day I want to be off. She has never done anything like this before, at least since I have worked with her. She’s normally pretty tough about granting time off requests, so her willingness to randomly give us an extra free day took me by surprise.

Sure, ask! “Would it be okay for me to use this for January 30 instead? That’s my birthday and I’d love to use this to take it off.” (Or you could ask to use it for your already-scheduled vacation, but there’s more chance she’ll feel like you’re turning what was meant to be a feel-good perk into something more administrative since you already have that time scheduled — which doesn’t make logical sense, since it would mean you had an additional day to use down the road, but I suspect the birthday would be more in keeping with the spirit of what she’s trying to offer.)

4. Should my exempt employees be using PTO for appointments?

I’m a faculty member at a university, and I supervise some staff members. These staff members are all exempt and have all been in their roles since before I became a supervisor. I’ve noticed that they will use a few hours of annual leave in order to take a pet to the vet or for various other things that might require coming in late or leaving early. They will also sometimes “make up” hours in the evening if they had to come in late or leave early during the week. Their roles are 8 am – 4:30 pm positions that require at least one of them in the office during this time.

From following your site, I was under the impression that, as exempt employees, they don’t need to be taking leave for these incremental hours of time they aren’t working. This all gets a little more complicated, because technically I supervise one person, and she supervises the other two employees. I have deferred to her on how she wants to manage office coverage and their tasks. She’s also been supervising employees for much longer than me, so I deferred to her on how leave is supposed to be used and reported. (Remember, this is a university, so I went from a regular faculty role with incredible flexibility to a supervisory role without being given any real information on how HR-type rules work. Academia!)

Ultimately, my question is whether these employees are unnecessarily using their leave. Should they be able to come in late (if approved) and not use leave? And if so, is this something that I legally need to fix? Would we be in legal trouble if it came to light that exempt employees were being required to use leave in this way?

So, first, the law on exempt employees doesn’t say anything at all about how they need to use their leave; it is exclusively concerned with their pay. Specifically, exempt employees be paid their full salary for any week in which they do any work (with a few narrow exceptions, like if they’re working a partial week because it’s their first or last week of work). But the law doesn’t care if that money is coming from their paid leave or not; it only cares that they are paid. So there’s no legal issue here.

What does matter is your employer’s personnel policies, and maybe also what’s common practice in your department. Some employers (and some managers) strictly require that people use PTO for the sort of thing you describe (or make up the time). Others are much more flexible and figure there’s a give and take, and as long as people’s work is getting done and they’re not abusing their flexibility, they’re not going to nickel and dime them on PTO. So the question for you, first and foremost, is what your university’s policy is on this and, if it’s fairly strict, whether you as a manager have standing to choose to implement more flexibility on your team.

5. Can I apply at an organization that’s not hiring?

How do I write a speculative application to an organization that isn’t hiring right now? Is that even something I should try?

I really want to get out of my current job (law enforcement) and have found an NGO that I’m a perfect fit for. Unfortunately they’re not hiring at the moment, but I’d like to send them my resume in case it’s something they’d consider now or in the future.

I’ve never sent a speculative application before. Is it a good idea? How should I structure it? Do I turn the email into a cover letter, or write a separate cover letter and attach it like I would for a listed job ad?

I wouldn’t be considering this if I weren’t certain that I’d be a great asset to the organization, and this level of self-confidence isn’t typical for me. But I don’t want to make a fool of myself and blow my shot in case it hurts my chances in the future. What would you advise?

You definitely can try doing this! There’s no guarantee it will lead to anything, of course, but there’s no reason you can’t give it a shot.

You’d make your email your cover letter, explaining why you’re contacting them and what you could offer them — and why you’re motivated to contact them even outside of any specific position being available — and then you say, “I’m attaching my resume so you can see my full professional background, and I’d love to talk if you’re ever hiring someone to do X.”

People do this a lot, especially with nonprofits (because they tend to attract a lot of people who want to work for that cause, specifically). It won’t hurt your chances for the future at all (if anything, it could help them).

The post I can’t get answers about a special project, candidate with risqué photos online, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

INDIANAPOLIS—Dusting off the kinetic sand from his hands as he walked with his head held high toward the exit, 34-year-old area man Benjamin Schrock reportedly told visitors and staff of Discovery Zone Children’s Museum on Tuesday that he knows when he’s not welcome. “I’ve been around the block, but never in my adult life have I experienced so many hostile glares when simply trying to splash in the sensory water playground, make Spirograph art, or dig for fossils in the dino tub,” Shrock said with an audible lump in his throat as he recounted being made to feel “strange” and “othered” when he spent an hour milking a cow statue’s rubber udders in the interactive barnyard exhibit. “That sign saying ‘All are welcome’ above the front desk? Rich. It’s funny how a place ostensibly meant to spark curiosity could be so ignorant toward an adult man who happens to enjoy hands-on activities designed for learning through play. Once I get back the ziplock bag full of quarters I paid for my ticket with, trust me, I will gladly be on my way. Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’m owed at least one turn on the big fire truck.” At press time, Shrock said he was dismayed to report feeling even greater undue hostility after he was removed from a bouncy house at the indoor inflatable play center.

The post Area Man Knows When He Not Welcome In Children’s Museum appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Cutting off a top security advisor mid-speech as he eagerly posed his question, President Donald Trump reportedly interrupted a briefing Tuesday to ask officials from the National Intelligence Council whether God was real. “So what do we know about Him? Are there any photos?” said a quizzical Trump, adding that he brought the matter up to multiple directors of national intelligence during his previous administration but never received a satisfying answer. “Let’s just cut to the chase here: big guy in heaven. Is He real or not? And if so, have we made contact? You know, there’s a very smart boy who died and says heaven is for real—does the CIA have any files on him? Who here knows? I want every document we have on God released immediately.” At press time, members of the U.S. Intelligence Community were reportedly reassuring Trump that God was real, He had lots of money, and they would immediately look into suing Him for $200 million.

The post Trump Asks National Intelligence Point-Blank If God Real appeared first on The Onion.

WASHINGTON—Saying the changes would empower Americans to make more informed decisions about their family’s health, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Wednesday that he had scaled back the department’s childhood mortality schedule. “For too long, the U.S. government has imposed strict and unnecessary guidelines about whether or not our nation’s children should survive past infancy,” said Kennedy, adding that parents deserved the right to choose whether or not their offspring died at a young age of preventable disease. “The truth is, no parent should be forced to watch their child live a healthy life and avoid contracting RSV, the flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, or bacterial meningitis. America is a developed nation. There’s no reason for anyone to live past 35.” Kennedy added that if Americans still wanted to watch their children survive well into adulthood, they should consult with a physician and think deeply about the risks.

The post RFK Jr. Scales Back Childhood Mortality Schedule appeared first on The Onion.

The post Study Finds Increased Demand Among Gen Z For Non-Alcoholic Fathers appeared first on The Onion.

Modern Spy Craft



View Comic!

It’s good to see the old friends back together. Time has passed very slowly in Solver. Lottie arrived in Sheffield in September (in 2022), and it’s now November. This glacial pace wasn’t intentional, but it’s good to acknowledge it. Scary Go Round used to run in virtually real time!

The post Warmer than this old place appeared first on Bad Machinery.

Energy company stocks and the price of crude oil surged after the United States captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, with Trump claiming U.S. oil companies would participate in rebuilding the South American country’s energy infrastructure. What do you think?

The post Oil Stocks Rise After U.S. Capture Of Maduro appeared first on The Onion.

The post Trump Spotted Wearing Paper Sign Reading ‘The President’ appeared first on The Onion.

CARACAS, VENEZUELA ― In a stunning shift after over a decade of dictatorial rule, the government of Venezuela fell this weekend to a new, slightly different dictator. Following his autocratic overthrow of an autocrat, the new American dictator of Venezuela swiftly moved to put the old Venezuelan dictator of Venezuela on trial for cocaine importation. […]

The post Dictator frees Venezuela from dictator appeared first on The Beaverton.

Los Angeles, CA – Actress Sydney Sweeney has reported that she is very tired of hearing stories about whoever this Sydney Sweeney person is. “I’ll be honest, I never watched Euphoria,” stated Sweeney during a recent interview. “I know that was like, one of her things. Was she in White Lotus? I just feel like […]

The post Sydney Sweeney getting very annoyed by endless stories about this Sydney Sweeney person appeared first on The Beaverton.