Independent News Drop

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

HAST The city just locked in federal money that fills a hole that census data opened up.

KELI In 2020, the Census Bureau counted Amarillo's population above 200,000 for the first time. The Federal Transit Administration used that number to reclassify us out of the small-urban funding tier. That cost the city around 1.4 million dollars a year in transit grants. A year ago, staff realized the same reclassification made us newly eligible for a different pool — the FTA's Section 5310 grant, which funds services for seniors and people with disabilities. Amarillo applied. This week, the city secured the award. The mechanism here is straightforward: the Census bump that cut one funding stream opened another one that the city had the presence of mind to chase down. Watch whether council uses this to expand paratransit hours or routes, because that's where you'll see whether this fills the gap or just softens the landing.

HAST On a different front, the Texas Attorney General's office is looking at the American Bar Association.

KELI Ken Paxton's team opened an investigation into whether the ABA has been engaged in what his office calls anticompetitive practices. The ABA accredits law schools. Paxton's framing suggests he believes that accreditation power may be leveraged in ways that harm competition or market entry. We don't have the full investigative brief yet, so the specifics are still forming. This is a state-level look at a national professional organization, and it's worth following what evidence Paxton's team actually presents.

HAST A retailer in Texas stopped using a pesticide after Paxton's consumer protection division moved.

KELI The specifics on which retailer and which pesticide aren't fully detailed in the initial reporting, but the action itself — a company changing its chemical use after state pressure — is straightforward enforcement. That one's moving already.

HAST Up at Perryton, the high school got a grant to build tennis courts.

KELI The United States Tennis Association awarded money to Perryton ISD for construction at Perryton High School. That's a capital project that clears the local funding question.

HAST Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport now offers a TSA security option that only 12 other airports nationwide have live.

KELI It's called Gateside by TSA PreCheck. If you're a PreCheck member, you can get a pass to go through security and meet an arriving passenger at their gate without buying a ticket. The airport's details are at tsa.gov/precheck/gateside-tsa-precheck.

HAST One date marker before we close.

KELI On this day in 1980, Michael Myers became the first member of either chamber of Congress to be expelled since the Civil War.

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

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. A principle from Gil's Intelligent Version worth borrowing: where a source genuinely leaves a question open, an honest translation preserves the ambiguity instead of quietly deciding for you.

HAST They call it The Refused Verdict. At inkwell dot wiki, slash giv.