Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Amarillo News Drop. I'm Keli, joined by Hast.

HAST Heat and no relief. Meteorologist Brian James says the Texas Panhandle stays in triple-digit territory tonight into Sunday morning — low humidity, and the only real shot at rain is a slim chance from a weak system drifting in from Colorado and Kansas. So far this heat wave has held. That's the setup.

KELI The counter on that: newsrooms will call this a weather story. The mechanism underneath is the ridge of high pressure sitting over the Southwest — it's the same system that's been locking out storm systems for weeks now. The prediction to watch is whether that Colorado-Kansas disturbance actually reaches us or gets shunted north. If it does move south, the next 48 hours tell us something about whether the pattern is finally cracking. If it stays north, we're looking at another week or more of this.

HAST On the state level, Governor Abbott's calling for a ban on foreign funding and H-1B visa workers in public schools. No specifics yet on how that ban would work, which schools it covers, or what enforcement looks like. But the signal is clear — Abbott's tightening the bar on foreign nationals in K-12.

KELI Different front. The federal government launched Project Safe Schools in North Texas — that's an initiative from Washington aimed at school security. No detail yet on what it does in the Panhandle or whether it reaches Amarillo ISD or Randall County schools.

HAST And down in Lubbock, activists are pushing to remove sexually explicit books from Lubbock ISD libraries. That's the same pressure campaign rolling through school systems across Texas — local groups naming specific titles and demanding review boards pull them from shelves.

KELI One date marker. On this day in 2004, versions of Edvard Munch's The Scream and Madonna were stolen at gunpoint from a museum in Oslo, Norway.

HAST That's the Amarillo News Drop. Full script and sources at inkwell.wiki/news/amarillo.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. There's an essay at Gil's Intelligent Version on what actually happened in 1914 — and how a real historical instinct curdled into false certainty the moment someone tried to measure it to the inch.

HAST It's called The Witness and the Ruler. At inkwell dot wiki, slash giv.