Category: CNN Regional

By Francis Page Jr.

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    July 7, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — Texas Southern University (TSU) is not simply planning buildings. It is planning a future worthy of its past.

On July 7, 2026, TSU launched a comprehensive Campus Master Plan outlining approximately $1.7 billion in long-term capital priorities and more than 20 phased projects over the next decade. For a university preparing for its Centennial, this is not just brick, glass, concrete, and campus maps. This is a declaration: the Tigers are not tiptoeing into the next century. They are marching, drumline ready.

The plan supports TSU’s Ascend 2030 strategy, aligning campus growth with student success, workforce preparation, research expansion, community engagement, and institutional effectiveness. TSU’s strategic plan is built around “Renew, Enhance, and Expand,” with core focus areas including student achievement, academic research, operational excellence, and technology and artificial intelligence, according to the university’s Ascend 2030 framework.

President J. W. Crawford III framed the Master Plan as a disciplined, flexible guide for growth. “As Texas Southern University moves forward, it is important that investments in facilities and infrastructure support projected outcomes,” Crawford said. “The Master Plan aligns physical development with institutional strategic priorities, providing a stable framework that can be expanded over time.”

For Houston, that matters. TSU sits in the heart of Third Ward, but its impact has never been confined to campus boundaries. Founded in 1927 as Houston Colored Junior College, TSU grew from a segregated education system into one of America’s essential historically Black universities. Its evolution includes Houston College for Negroes, Texas State University for Negroes, and, after students petitioned the Legislature, Texas Southern University in 1951, according to TSU’s official history and legacy page. That is not just history. That is testimony.

Now, nearly 100 years later, the university is preparing to build for the students who will lead Houston, Texas, and the nation through the next 100.

Several projects are already moving from vision board to construction reality. Three new academic and research facilities, the interconnected Catalyst for Urban Transformation, the Nabrit Science Center, and the Health and Wellness Center, are expected to begin construction later this year. Supported by more than $95 million in state funding, all three are expected to open during TSU’s Centennial year.

Also advancing is planning and design for a proposed new Thurgood Marshall Law Center, supported by a $10 million legislative allocation in collaboration with the Texas Facilities Commission. For a law school whose history is tied to Heman Sweatt’s fight against segregation in Texas legal education, that investment carries a special kind of weight. Some buildings house classrooms. Others carry a movement.

The Master Plan also prioritizes student-centered facilities, academic and research infrastructure, residential and recreational amenities, and spaces that better connect TSU with the broader Houston community. Translation: the future campus is being designed not only to look better, but to work better.

“Houston and Texas continue to grow, and Texas Southern must leap ahead of that growth,” Crawford said. That is the right spirit. Because when TSU grows, Houston gains more than square footage. It gains nurses, lawyers, researchers, entrepreneurs, public servants, educators, scientists, artists, and civic leaders.

For nearly a century, Texas Southern University has turned obstacles into opportunity and students into history-makers. With this Master Plan, TSU is making clear that its Centennial will not be a finish line. It will be a launchpad. photo

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446

By Burt Levine

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    July 7, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — In Texas’ newly redrawn Congressional District 9, Leticia Gutierrez is running the kind of campaign that feels less like a political rollout and more like a homecoming with walking shoes.

Gutierrez, the Democratic nominee for the new CD 9, emerged from the March 3, 2026 Democratic Primary with 54 percent of the vote in a six-candidate field, avoiding a runoff and proving that roots still matter in a district reshaped by political mapmaking. The newly drawn seat is anchored in east Harris County and includes major industrial and working-class communities, with parts of Liberty County also folded into the new political geography. The Texas Tribune has described the seat as newly drawn and red-leaning, one of several districts altered by Texas Republicans in the last redistricting fight. As reported by the Texas Tribune.

Now, with the Tuesday, November 3, 2026, General Election approaching, Gutierrez is set to face Republican Alex Mealer, the former Harris County Judge candidate who won the GOP nomination after a primary runoff. As reported by the Texas Tribune.

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For Gutierrez, this race is personal before it is political.

“I grew up going to Southmayd Elementary, Deady Junior High and Milby High,” Gutierrez said, proudly naming the east Houston schools that shaped her. She later attended HCC Southeast, earned finance and economics degrees from the University of St. Thomas, and began environmental graduate studies at Rice University.

That biography matters because CD 9 is not just a line on a map. It is neighborhoods, schoolyards, church pews, Ship Channel workers, small business owners, military families, and parents who know the price of groceries long before they know the language of campaign finance reports.

Gutierrez speaks that language, too. As the daughter of farm workers and the mother of a U.S. Army soldier deployed overseas, she frames her campaign around service, sacrifice, and the everyday dignity of working families. She has spent more than 45 years in east Houston, raising children, building community, advocating for clean air and water, and pushing for economic development that does not leave longtime residents coughing in the shadows of industry.

Her environmental work began, she says, when her son developed asthma. That family crisis became civic purpose. What started as a mother’s concern became a public mission: cleaner air, healthier neighborhoods, and a government that sees east Harris County as more than a sacrifice zone.

Gutierrez also brings a finance and economics background to a race where kitchen-table issues are front and center. She argues that Washington must stop rewarding corporations with public subsidies while families struggle to pay bills, rent, insurance, and medical costs. It is a message with edge, but also with hope: government should work for people who work.

The politics of CD 9 may be challenging, but democracy has never promised easy terrain. The district was redrawn in a way that transformed familiar communities into a new congressional battleground. Still, Gutierrez’s primary victory suggests that voters are listening for something more grounded than national talking points. They are listening for a neighbor.

Early voting for the November 3 General Election begins Monday, October 19 and runs through Friday, October 30, according to Harris County election officials. Election Day voting will take place Tuesday, November 3, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Harris Votes

Houston Style Magazine encourages every eligible reader to get registered, get informed, and get to the polls. Because in CD 9, the map may be new, but the power of the people is as old as democracy itself.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446

By Francis Page Jr.

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    July 7, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — Harris County Precinct One students did not just board a bus Monday, July 6. They stepped into a rolling classroom of courage.

Commissioner Rodney Ellis greeted 15 high school students and their families before they departed for the Expose Excellence Youth Program’s Freedom Tour 2026, a multi-state educational journey through some of the South’s most sacred Civil Rights landmarks. With approximately $37,500 in support from the Office of Commissioner Ellis, these students are traveling beyond textbooks and into the living geography of America’s long march toward justice.

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The tour includes stops in Selma, Tuskegee, Memphis, and New Orleans, cities where the fight for voting rights, equal access, dignity, and democracy was not theory. It was sacrifice. It was strategy. It was people, often young people, deciding that silence was too expensive.

For Commissioner Ellis, a longtime civil rights leader whose public service spans more than four decades, the send-off fits a larger mission: connecting today’s youth with the history that shaped their rights and the responsibility that comes with them. Precinct One describes Ellis’ office as focused on opportunity, equity, justice, and quality of life for more than 1.2 million residents across a 365-square-mile region of Harris County.

And let’s be honest: a good history lesson can hit different when it comes with bus snacks, new friends, and the realization that Selma is not just a chapter title. It is a place. Memphis is not just where Dr. King’s final chapter unfolded. It is a reminder that moral leadership often comes with a cost. Tuskegee is not only an institution of Black excellence. It is proof that education has always been one of freedom’s sharpest tools. New Orleans, with its layered Black history, culture, resilience, and civic complexity, reminds students that justice work is never one-size-fits-all.

The Freedom Tour gives students what every young leader deserves: context. It asks them to see themselves not as spectators of history, but as heirs to it. The students will walk through places where ordinary citizens became extraordinary because the moment demanded it. They will see how organizing, voting, marching, studying, preaching, writing, and refusing to move from one’s principles helped bend America closer to its promise.

That kind of education matters now. In a time when voting rights, fair representation, civic trust, and historical truth remain national flashpoints, sending Houston-area students to Civil Rights landmarks is more than a field trip. It is a democracy investment.

Commissioner Ellis has consistently used Precinct One’s platform to elevate civil rights history and public memory, including through initiatives such as Moving Monuments, which highlights social justice leaders and the role of buses in movements from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the Freedom Riders. As see on Precinct One Moving Monumentsproject.

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The symbolism of this student departure is hard to miss. Young people from Harris County are boarding a bus not to escape history, but to meet it face-to-face. They are being invited to ask sharper questions: Who fought for my rights? What did they risk? What does leadership look like in my generation? And when the next hard moral moment arrives, will I recognize it?

That is the beauty of Freedom Tour 2026. It does not merely honor the past. It recruits the future.

As these 15 students journey through the South, they carry Houston with them: its diversity, its grit, its ambition, and its deep tradition of civic leadership. They return not just with photos, but with perspective. And perspective, in the hands of young people, can become power. More info on the Precinct One – Moving Moments Program: hcp1.net/Moving-Monuments

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446

By Adam Thompson

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    CATONSVILLE, Maryland (WJZ) — A video showed a car flying off a Baltimore County road and onto a front lawn on Monday. Unfortunately, it’s nothing new for home owner Krista Cantafio.

She told CBS News Baltimore this was the ninth time a vehicle has crashed on her property in the last two years. Her home is off a sharp curve in Catonsville and she said the county has yet to help put an end to it.

She said Monday’s crash was the closest a car came to hitting her house on Kenwood Avenue.

Cantafio told CBS News Baltimore last month that she has had to replace several mailboxes after cars sped along a dangerous curve and landed in her yard.

She said she has tried several measures to prevent it from happening, including placing traffic cones and rocks in her yard. There are also rumble strips aimed at slowing drivers.

“I’m just tired of cleaning up crashes,” Cantafio said. “My grass is gone, I have had to replace the mailbox several times, I have had to go to court, it’s been a lot.”

Cantafio said she contacted Baltimore County’s Department of Public Works and Transportation (DPWT).

The DPWT told CBS News Baltimore that they were evaluating the curve. They said that the assessment would take four to six weeks.

“DPWT will now conduct a new traffic safety assessment to determine what additional measures may be warranted. This evaluation will take approximately 4 to 6 weeks and will include a review of crash history, traffic volumes, and speed data,” DPWT stated.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Francis Page Jr.

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    July 7, 2026 (Houston Style Magazine) — In Harris County politics, a headline with a dollar sign can move faster than a summer thunderstorm rolling across I-10. Add a familiar last name, a powerful county position, and the phrase “hundreds applied,” and suddenly the public is invited to lean in, squint hard, and wonder whether something does not smell quite right.

That is the atmosphere surrounding recent scrutiny of Erica Lee Carter, Harris County’s newly appointed County Administrator. ABC13’s 13 Investigates reported that roughly 401 people applied for the position, that Carter’s salary is about $411,000, and that she is the daughter of the late Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. Those facts are fair game. Public salaries deserve public review. High-level appointments deserve questions. Taxpayers deserve transparency.

But journalism also owes the public something more valuable than suspicion: context.

And in this case, context is not a footnote. It is the story.

Harris County Commissioners Court appointed Erica Lee Carter on February 12, 2026, with her tenure beginning March 9. She became the first African American woman to serve as Harris County Administrator, stepping into a role created in June 2021 as part of a larger effort to professionalize county government. The office was designed to help oversee the day-to-day operations of one of the largest county governments in America, coordinate major departments, improve accountability, and execute the policy direction of Commissioners Court.

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This is not a ribbon-cutting position. It is not a ceremonial desk with a nice view. The Harris County Administrator functions much like a chief operating officer for a county of nearly five million residents, with responsibilities touching budgeting, departmental coordination, strategic planning, performance management, and public service delivery.

So yes, the salary is large. But the job is also large. Very large.

What the public deserved from ABC13’s report was a clearer explanation that this compensation level did not begin with Erica Lee Carter. The County Administrator’s salary has been high before her appointment. Previous administrators and interim leadership were also paid at executive levels because the county built the position as a professional management role. If the salary is the issue, then the honest question is not simply, “Why is Erica Lee Carter paid $411,000?” The better question is, “How has Harris County historically valued this office, and has that value been consistent across administrations?”

That distinction matters.

It also matters that Carter was not slipped quietly into the position by one faction in a smoke-filled back room. Commissioners Court unanimously approved her appointment. That includes Republican Commissioner Tom Ramsey, who publicly praised her understanding of Harris County during the appointment discussion. In today’s political climate, unanimous agreement on Commissioners Court is not exactly an everyday coffee order. When Democrats and a Republican commissioner support the same administrative appointment, that deserves to be reported with the same volume as the salary figure.

Carter’s background also deserves fuller treatment. Before becoming County Administrator, she served as Policy Director for Harris County Precinct One, where she worked on county priorities and led policy operations. She also served briefly in Congress, completing the term of her late mother, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, after winning a special election. Before that, she built a record in education, public policy, and civic service, including service on the Harris County Department of Education Board of Trustees. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master of Public Policy from Duke University.

None of that makes her beyond scrutiny. No public official is. But it does make her more than a famous last name.

And that is where ABC13’s framing becomes troubling. By emphasizing her connection to Sheila Jackson Lee while not giving equal weight to the history of the position, the prior salary structure, the unanimous vote, and Carter’s county policy experience, the story risks creating an impression before readers have received the full record.

There is a difference between investigation and insinuation.

To be clear, the public should ask how the hiring process worked. If 401 people applied, residents have a right to know how finalists were evaluated, what criteria mattered most, and how Commissioners Court weighed internal experience against outside executive credentials. Those questions are legitimate. They are not attacks. They are the normal business of accountable government.

But fair journalism should not stop at the most clickable facts. It should also answer the obvious follow-up questions: What did previous administrators earn? When was the office created? What departments does the role oversee? Who voted for Carter? What did supporters say about her qualifications? Was the salary already attached to the office before her name entered the conversation?

Those missing pieces change the public’s understanding.

Harris County residents do not need soft coverage. They need complete coverage. They do not need public officials protected from questions. They need those questions asked in a way that informs rather than inflames.

Erica Lee Carter now carries a serious responsibility. She must help lead county operations at a time when Harris County is facing budget pressure, infrastructure needs, public safety concerns, economic equity debates, and a tense political environment. Her performance should be measured. Her decisions should be watched. Her office should be transparent.

But scrutiny should be applied evenly, not selectively. If the salary was newsworthy under Carter, it was newsworthy under the administrators before her. If the structure of the office is worth questioning now, it was worth questioning when the office was created. If taxpayers deserve answers, they deserve the full timeline, not just the part that makes the loudest headline.

EDITOR NOTE: ABC13 may not owe Erica Lee Carter silence from scrutiny, but it does owe Harris County viewers the full context. And if its reporting created an unfair impression, then a public clarification, and yes, perhaps even an apology, would be appropriate.

That is not asking the press to back away from accountability. It is asking the press to practice it fully. Newsrooms are not weakened when they add context, issue clarifications, or revisit a story with greater precision. They are strengthened. Trust is not built by pretending every first draft is perfect. Trust is built when journalists show the public that fairness matters as much as speed.

At Houston Style Magazine, we believe accountability and fairness can stand in the same room. In fact, they must. Harris County deserves a press corps that asks hard questions, but also respects the intelligence of readers enough to provide the whole picture.

Erica Lee Carter should be judged by her work, her transparency, her leadership, and her results. Not reduced to a salary figure. Not reduced to her mother’s legacy. And not reduced to a headline that leaves too much unsaid.

Fact-check support: ABC13 reported the salary, applicant count, ranking, and Ramsey quote; Harris County confirmed Carter’s appointment and historic role; Houston Chronicle reporting supports the office timeline, prior administrators, and salary context.

OCA.HarrisCountyTX.gov

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

Kierra Lee
KIELEESTYLE@GMAIL.COM
4096658446