Publish Date: November 7, 2025 5:02 pm Author: Texas AFT
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Friday, November 7, 2025
We Take Care of Us
Across Texas and the rest of the nation, federal workers are missing paychecks, and millions are waiting to see if they’ll receive any SNAP benefits at all amid the government shutdown.
The fate of those benefits remains up in the air, with courts ordering the Trump Administration to fund them despite the shutdown over the weekend, only to be followed by a social media post from the president saying benefits would only be paid after the shutdown Tuesday. By Wednesday, an official with the U.S. Department of Agriculture had backtracked and said SNAP benefits would indeed be paid out, but at 65% of their normal amounts.
No one should go hungry in the wealthiest country in the world. It’s up to politicians to fund the services our taxes pay for. But right now, it’s up to us to help our neighbors while Congress dawdles.
Find food assistance, unemployment assistance, and other emergency resources in this guide from the Texas AFL-CIO.
Our union family stands ready to support our communities, and we encourage members wherever they are to consider hosting food drives in your area. Here’s how to get started.
Act
Call your representative and senator, as well as House and Senate leaders, with this easy AFL-CIO tool and urge them to end this shutdown while keeping health care affordable for working families.
An attendee at Texas AFT’s biennial convention in Dallas earlier this year.
Photo by Brooke Jonsson, CCR Studios.
This week, election results nationwide resulted in decisive wins for candidates in local and state races who focused on real, quality-of-life issues over divisive partisan politics. In Texas, too, several local races underlined the same trend, with record off-year election turnout.
In late October, a coalition of major labor unions — including the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and AFT — filed an amended lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration’s efforts to terminate or force furloughs of federal workers amid the current government shutdown.
Hotline readers know that House Bill 8, passed during the second special session this year, does not “eliminate STAAR.” As Texas AFT President Zeph Capo said at the time, “They’ve just rebranded it.”
While most aspects of the legislation will be implemented in the 2027-2028 school year, four specific changes from HB 8 go into effect starting in December 2025.
A federal judge has blocked a key provision of Texas’s book-rating law, HB 900 by Rep. Jared Patterson, otherwise known as the READER Act (Restricting Explicit and Adult Designated Educational Resources), marking a win for book vendors.
Under HB 900, vendors were required to rate every book sold to public school libraries for sexual explicitness, and schools were forbidden from purchasing titles flagged as “sexually explicit”. It is unclear what effect remains of a December 2023 State Board of Education rule requiring each school district to adopt a book collection development policy prohibiting library material “rated sexually explicit material by the selling library material vendor.”
It’s nearly time for the 15th-annual Texas Tribune Festival, the breakout ideas and politics event that brings 300+ inspiring leaders and change-makers to downtown Austin, Nov. 13–15.
The full schedule features 100+ sessions on the issues shaping Texas and the nation — education, the economy, public policy, the arts and more. Be there to challenge ideas, make connections, and leave inspired to bring your own big ideas to life.
📖 Ed. Dept. Cuts Grants That Were Helping College Students Become Teachers. In mid-September, Texas’ Prairie View A&M University, where Veronica Turbinton is enrolled in the teacher education program, received notice from top officials at the Department of Education that it was immediately discontinuing more than $2 million in remaining grant funding that was subsidizing tuition for Turbinton and dozens of her classmates. (Education Week, Nov. 4)
📖 The Lege’s ‘Big Government Intrusion’ into University Academics. Expanding on last session’s anti-DEI campus crackdown, some Republicans in the Legislature are now going after gender and ethnic studies programs and faculty independence. (Texas Observer, April 24)
🎧 The Shocking Billionaire Plot to Dismantle Public Education. Texas is on the verge of passing a law that could defund public education. Vouchers send public taxpayer dollars to private schools. It could cost taxpayers $10 billion by 2030. And it could destroy Friday Night Lights. (More Perfect Union, April 22)
This Education Department Official Lost His Job. Here’s What He Says Is at Risk. Fewer teachers. Incomplete data. Delays in addressing problems and getting financial aid information. Those are just some of the impacts Jason Cottrell, who worked as a data collector at the Department of Education for nine and a half years before being laid off along with more than a thousand other agency employees, warns the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the department’s funding and workforce could have on the country’s education system. (Time, July 18)
This Education Department Official Lost His Job. Here’s What He Says Is at Risk. Fewer teachers. Incomplete data. Delays in addressing problems and getting financial aid information. Those are just some of the impacts Jason Cottrell, who worked as a data collector at the Department of Education for nine and a half years before being laid off along with more than a thousand other agency employees, warns the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the department’s funding and workforce could have on the country’s education system. (Time, July 18)
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