Horns Up: Student District finally finalized

On Monday, the Austin Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission approved a new district map of Austin that includes a district in which 45 percent of the residents are students. With students making up such a large portion of the population, anyone running to represent the district will need to heed the students’ wishes and needs, a big change in a city where historically students have had very little say in local politics. The creation of this district is a major step toward addressing the issues that affect students the most, such as housing prices in West Campus or the cancellation of Capital Metro shuttle routes, as well as a testament to what a group of devoted student activists (such a group has been pushing for the creation of this district for over a year) can do.

Horns Down: SCOTUS declines to intervene in abortion case

In a 5-4 vote Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States chose not to reinstate an injunction that had been put in place by a lower court on the enforcement of the controversial Texas abortion laws. House Bill 2, consequently, will go into effect as planned. Rural women across the state are already suffering from the lack of abortion providers, and this decision comes as yet another in a series of blows to Texas women in need of abortion services. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the majority opinion, declined to intervene for procedural reasons, stating that the court “may not vacate a stay entered by a court of appeals unless that court clearly and ‘demonstrably’ erred in its application of ‘accepted standards.’”

However, Justice Stephen Bryer correctly judged the severity of the situation when he wrote in his dissenting opinion, “the harms to the individual women whose rights [HB2] restricts while it remains in effect will be permanent.”