When he was four, his ­father walked out, overwhelmed by the debt and discord in their home.

When he was 14, his mother threw him out, stabbed him in the face with a knife, told him if he ever came back she would kill him. He began sleeping on park benches.

In the years between, his older and younger brothers got involved in gangs, came home high on drugs, fought and stabbed each other, resulting in trips to the hospital and jail. They finally started beating their mom, who'd been pounding on them for years.

Victor Cardenas, a homeless wanderer for much of his high school career, graduated this past Memorial Day weekend the valedictorian of his class at Furr High School, with a perfect 4.0 out of 4.0 average. He's the first person in his family to get past the tenth grade.

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Through all of the hard times, he kept coming to class. Furr High School personnel and his friends stepped in and helped him hold on.

It is an amazing story, a true triumph of determination over circumstance, as appalling in its details as it is uplifting in its final chapter.

But, both fortunately and unfortunately, it is not unique.

When Laura Rae was six or seven, she was molested several times by a cousin. It didn't stop till her cousin's brother found out about it. When she was 15, another cousin, to whom she'd confided the earlier molestation, molested her as well.

When her father found out, he called Rae "a female dog." In her senior year at Smiley High (now merged with North Forest), her father threw her out of the house.

Although she'd always gotten good grades and was ranked 14th in her class, Rae couldn't figure out a way to keep things going. She shared an apartment with a friend and had to come up with her portion of the rent money. An online program through a private home schooling business didn't work out for her. So she was officially a dropout.

Rae also gave a valedictorian address this past weekend. She's part of the class of about 100 students attending HISD's internal charter school Reach High, also on the Furr campus — a school designed for dropouts trying to get their diplomas.

Both students will be going to Texas A&M this fall, substantially endowed with scholarships, and the College Station school should be commended for its outreach efforts, which take it into schools that a lot of colleges and universities wouldn't touch.

But A&M and other schools wouldn't have had a chance to look at either of these kids if it hadn't been for the teachers and staff at Furr, handpicked and presided over by the irrepressible Bertie Simmons.

Simmons, a 76-year-old former district superintendent brought out of retirement to head up the East Side high school, has succeeded (the school achieved "recognized" status in 2009) where other schools and their leaders have failed. And she's done it not by being a stern martinet, but through "positive reinforcement."

"We say we have an invitational school. We want everybody who comes to this school to feel comfortable. We have so many who are homeless. We do everything we can to help the students."
_____________________

In the Cardenas house there was always trouble. "My mom kind of had a drinking problem, and my brothers kind of had a drug problem, and they were in the Little Red and Denver Harbor gangs. The situation kind of turned bad," says Cardenas, who'll be 17 this summer.

His mother developed cancer when he was 12. She was unhappy about his father leaving and didn't stay around the house much herself. In a documentary Victor did last year called Just Being Victor, he talks about the abuse and unhappiness and his brothers, now 18 and 15.

"It got to the point where each of us was arrested by the cops or was taken to the hospital," Victor says. "Whenever they would fight, they stabbed each other. It got even worse, and each day my brothers would hit my mom."

One day, upset that one of his brothers hadn't been home for days, Victor's mother got in an argument with him, and she stabbed him near one of his eyes. "She told me, 'If you ever come back to this house, I'll kill you.'"

He went to school that day crying, and teachers and friends tried to find out what was wrong, but he didn't tell them. He decided not to go home that night and began sleeping on benches in Denver Harbor Park. He kept going to school because a) he liked it and b) he didn't know what else to do with his days.

Eventually he told the school nurse, Kellie Vorberg, what had happened, and Children's Protective Services was called in.

"They opened a CPS case. They told me they were going to take me out of the school 'cause my brothers were gang leaders. I didn't want to leave the school. I had done well in all my tests," Victor says. But Simmons and Vorberg called down one of his friends from class and asked if he could stay with his family. The house was small and accommodations were tight, but it worked. "CPS kind of dropped the case," Victor says.

But it was not a lasting solution. The friend was a senior and, like almost all of the students at Furr, did not live in the immediate neighborhood. He didn't have transportation, and so Victor began missing a lot of classes.

Victor bounced around, finally moving in with another friend, but this was another senior without transportation, and the same pattern occurred. It wasn't until this year, when film teacher Assol Kavtorina saw Victor crying in the hallway and invited him to live with her family, that he's had a secure home and makes it to school regularly.

Ending weeks of speculation, Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday morning finally unveiled the full list of items Texas lawmakers will be allowed to focus on during the upcoming special legislative session set to begin Thursday morning.

“The 87th Legislative Session was a monumental success for the people of Texas, but we have unfinished business to ensure that Texas remains the most exceptional state in America,” Abbott said in a statement Wednesday accompanying his list of priorities.

Included in Abbott’s to-do list are passing the “election integrity” and bail reform bills he was furious that Democrats blocked in the previous session’s waning moments. He also threw in a few favors to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick by including his pet topics of forcing transgender Texan kids to only play for the school sports teams that match their biological sex at birth and stopping the alleged scourge of social media censorship of conservatives, two measures that failed to pass in the regular session.

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There’s nary a mention of the coronavirus pandemic in any of Abbott’s priority items. There’s also not a word about the state’s electric grid even though it ran the risk of buckling all over again two weeks ago when an unexplained series of power generator failures led the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to ask Texans to crank up their thermostats into the upper 70's lest their air conditioners lose power altogether in the June heat.

While Republicans were mostly mum about Abbott’s agenda Wednesday morning, Texas House Democratic Caucus chair state Rep. Chris Turner of Grand Prairie quickly blasted Abbott’s list of priorities.

“The governor’s agenda for the special session shows he is more concerned with pandering to die-hard Trump supporters and right-wing extremists than he is with serving everyday Texans,” Turner wrote in a statement. “Abbott’s agenda proves one thing: he is clearly panicked about his upcoming primary election.”

"We have real crises in this state — hundreds of Texans died because the governor couldn’t keep the heat on last February, millions of Texans are still unable to access basic medical care and our COVID-19 vaccination rates have plummeted,” Turner continued. “That’s what a real leader would focus on.”

Abbott declared he would call the Texas Legislature back into town to work overtime as soon as the regular session concluded at the end of May with a dramatic late-night walkout from Texas House Democrats that killed the Republican-back slate of election reforms critics have called unjust voting restrictions, but which conservatives swore were all necessary reforms to prevent voter fraud.

He waited until June 22 to let lawmakers know they’d need to report to Austin’s pink granite Capitol building on July 8 to get back to work, and Wednesday's agenda announcement came just over 24 hours before the session is set to begin at 10 a.m. sharp Thursday.

After facing criticism from both parties for vetoing all the Legislature’s funding starting September 1, an unprecedented move Abbott made in a fit of rage after Democrats killed the Republican election bill, Abbott included re-funding the Texas Legislature as one of his special session agenda items.

While lawmakers’ salaries were never actually in jeopardy (their $600 a month paychecks are enshrined in the state constitution), they’ll now have the opportunity to make sure the hundreds of staffers who work within the Legislature will be paid after all, as long as lawmakers make progress on Abbott’s other priorities first, that is.

Some viewed Abbott’s Legislature funding veto as a bit of blackmail to convince state Democrats to show up for the special session in the first place, and to prevent a situation like during the 2003 redistricting saga when state Democrats fled to Oklahoma for weeks on end to try and delay the Legislature's Republican majority from drawing new political maps to their party’s benefit.

Bail reform got top-billing in Abbott’s agenda announcement, referencing the failed bill that would have made it harder for those accused of violent crimes to get released on cash bail ahead of trial. Next was “election integrity” legislation, the last version of which included provisions like banning Harris County innovations like 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting designed to make casting a ballot easier during the pandemic.

The controversial Republican bill also would have lowered the threshold for Texas judges to throw out election results in the future by allowing them to base the decision on simply the total number of votes suspected to be fraudulent with no requirement that the votes actually be counted to figure out which were cast for each candidate.

Abbott made sure to throw in an item on border security, requesting that legislators work on “providing funding to support law-enforcement agencies, counties, and other strategies as part of Texas’ comprehensive border security plan.” The charge to fork over more cash for protecting the border coincides with Abbott’s recent declaration that Texas will begin to build its own border wall, as long as the state can get enough funding from the legislature and from concerned residents from whom Abbott’s begged for donations.

In addition to Patrick’s “social media censorship” bill and his legislation targeting transgender youth sports participants all in the supposed name of “protecting girls sports," Abbott included a vague agenda item calling for more laws to ban so-called “critical race theory” from Texas schools, an academic philosophy conservatives are fearful is infiltrating classrooms across the state and is leading teachers to talk about things like systemic racism and the idea that some level of white supremacy is ingrained in certain United States institutions. Even though Abbott acknowledged the Legislature already passed a law targeting critical race theory in the classroom, clearly he thinks more needs to be done on the topic.

Speaking of the classroom, Abbott responded to backlash over his veto of a bill that would have required Texas kids to be taught about dating violence by including it in his list of special session topics to focus on, explaining that he’d support a new bill on the topic as long as the new law “recognizes the right of parents to opt their children out of the instruction.”

Rounding out the special session agenda are calls to put more limits in place for so-called “abortion-inducing drugs” to get into the hands of Texans, a request that legislators continue to tweak the Teacher Retirement System of Texas payout process by including supplemental one-time benefit checks to affected teachers, and a line-item about appropriating more state dollars to property-tax relief, the state foster-care system and state cybersecurity.

Abbott clearly doesn’t want the Legislature spending any more time on addressing issues with Texas’ power grid despite its deadly failures during February’s winter storm and the recent worries that early-June heat would be enough to cause power outages.

While he didn’t include anything about the grid in the special session agenda, Abbott did sent a letter to the Public Utility Commission on Tuesday ordering the advisory group to “take immediate action to improve electric reliability across the state” to “build upon the reforms passed” in the last Lege session that Abbott swore at the time fixed everything wrong with the grid.

In his Tuesday letter, Abbott asked the PUC to in turn ask ERCOT “to establish a maintenance schedule” for power generators, and requested that the PUC give added financial incentives to developing natural gas, coal and nuclear power while at the same time adding more financial penalties for renewable energy sources wind and solar power if they have trouble pumping out electricity during a crisis.

Past special sessions haven’t ended up addressing every single item the governor has laid out, so it’s likely not every one of Abbott’s priorities will be addressed during the 30-day session beginning Thursday. That said, there’s going to be at least one additional special session in the fall to start the redistricting process once the pandemic-delayed U.S. Census data gets delivered.

Along with redistricting, Abbott could always use the upcoming fall session as another opportunity to force state lawmakers to legislate on his demands, so he’ll have plenty more chances to twist the arms of legislators to get what he wants even if this soon-to-begin session doesn’t go according to plan.

Patrick, leader of the Texas Senate, didn’t immediately chime-in about Abbott’s agenda Wednesday. But Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan took to social media Wednesday morning to tell his colleagues they better be ready to get to work.

Abbott's full special session agenda proclamation is embedded below:

An explosive federal lawsuit against Harris County Precinct One Constable Alan Rosen and two other department officials alleges that Rosen’s office routinely held undercover “bachelor party” stings between 2019 and 2020 during which female deputies “were molested and traumatized by their intoxicated male commanding officers for their own sexual gratification.”

Now even the FBI has gotten involved, as the female deputies’ attorney Cordt Akers confirmed Thursday that federal investigators have issued subpoenas to his clients, indicating their investigation is underway.

"Our clients have been in full cooperation with the federal authorities into their investigation into the horrible misconduct in the Precinct One Human Trafficking Unit," Akers said in a statement. "The serious nature of these crimes deserves serious attention, and we are happy that this conduct will no longer go unchecked."

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These young female deputies, the lawsuit claims, were subjected to extremely inappropriate behavior from their drunken, handsy superiors posing as partygoers during undercover operations at local hotel rooms intended to entice sex workers to offer their services to the incognito officers so they could be promptly arrested, the lawsuit claims.

One human trafficking advocate within Rosen’s office who was disgusted when she learned of the “bachelor party” sting operations finally told her story to the Internal Affairs division within Rosen’s office after he and other county law enforcement leaders supposedly ignored her claims.

“On the very next day, she was fired,” the lawsuit reads.

The federal civil rights lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Southern District Court May 24 on behalf of four plaintiffs: Liz Gomez, Marissa Sanchez and Felicia McKinney, all deputies within Rosen’s office subjected to the humiliating undercover operations; and Jacquelyn Aluotto, the office’s human trafficking advocate who was fired after vocing her concerns about the inappropriate activity.

The suit was filed against Harris County, Rosen and Rosen’s direct deputies Chris Gore and Shane Rigdon. Gore was the mastermind behind the bachelor party sting efforts, and Rosen gave his blessing to go forward with them. During the undercover stings organized by Gore and Rigdon, hotel rooms would be rigged with hidden cameras and plainclothes deputies would have a fake party, rife with alcohol and all sorts of lewd behavior.

The lawsuit alleges female deputies recruited to assist in these stings like Gomez, Sanchez and McKinney were told they had to wear revealing clothing and were pressured to simulate sex with their male superiors. At times, the female deputies were forced to get naked in front of everyone in the room and their bosses, including Gore and Rigdon.

“Female deputies were ordered to purchase and wear revealing clothing for these operations,” the lawsuit reads. “Each of them was ordered that during these operations ‘to maintain cover’ Chief Gore would be lying down on top of them, fondling their breasts and bodied.”

“They were never warned, however, that during this conduct Chief Gore would be wearing only boxer shorts, fully aroused, drunk, kissing and licking their bodies, and giddy after every sting,” the lawsuit continued.

Akers alleged in a press conference that Rosen hadn’t just approved the stings. “Constable Rosen appeared at one of these operations personally,” Akers claimed.

In a statement, Rosen claimed that he “proactively instructed our Internal Affairs Division to conduct an investigation,” into the bachelor party stings once deputies started to complain, and that as a result, “We have suspended these types of operations as a result of our investigation.”

“While self-describing as a ‘second-chance guy,’ Constable Rosen and The County have shown that they are deliberately indifferent to the abuse suffered by these brave women and others,” the lawsuit read. “As such, this lawsuit has become necessary to bring accountability for the horrific ordeal of these young law enforcement deputies and ensure that their experience is never repeated.”

The full 40-page lawsuit is embedded below.

It was a dumb internet rumor that, like so many conspiracies these days, mushroomed into opinions and investigations and QAnon-worthy online discussions. It wasn't enough the Astros had been caught stealing signs assisted by the banging of trash can lids. It had to be worse. Thus began the theory that Jose Altuve, the leauge MVP in 2017, had worn some kind of electronic device or buzzer affixed to his chest to aid his hitting.

The conspiracy grew when he hit a series-winning walk-off home run against the Yankees in 2019. When mobbed at home plate, Altuve prevented his teammates from tearing off his jersey. He said he had been getting a tattoo and that he was worried he might embarrass his wife.

Fast forward to this weekend. The Astros, who struggled mightily against the Yanks at Minute Maid Park in this most recent series, watched Aaron Judge hit a walk-off homer in game two. As he rounded the bases, he trolled the Astros by opening his jersey to reveal his chest and, ostensibly, no buzzer.

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All that did was fuel more speculation online, but the Astros managed to get the last laugh in spectacular fashion. Down 7-2 in the ninth inning Sunday, the Astros scored three and put two on before Altuve came to the plate. The Astros second baseman proceeded to send a hanging slider into the Crawford boxes for another walk-off win.

When he reached home plate, his teammates ripped his jersey off leaving him bare chested as he celebrated with fans and the team.

Rarely does this kind of perfect symmetry happen in any part of life. The day before, Altuve was mocked by the Yankees' most recognizable player. The next day, he got his revenge.

Given the Astros recent struggles and the criticism they have taken for not sending any players to the All-Star game (all those selected as backups have chosen not to attend for injury and family reasons), a win like this takes them into the All-Star break with positive vibes and some legitimate momentum.

That clearly is more important than giving a metaphorical middle finger at the Astros haters out there in the form of a half-naked Jose Altuve parading around the infield after walking off the Yankees, but that doesn't mean it wasn't fun to watch.

To begin their first full-day of self-imposed exile in Washington, D.C., the Texas House Democrats who fled the state Monday afternoon spoke in front of the U.S. Capitol Tuesday to explain why they felt they had no choice but to skip town to prevent Texas Republicans from forcing through new election restrictions.

According to House Democratic Caucus Chairman Chris Turner of Grand Prairie, 57 House Democrats informed House leadership Tuesday morning they were out of state and requested that their voting machines be locked until their return, making it official that the 150-member House didn’t have the constitutionally required 100 members present to pass legislation.

Turner and his fellow Texas Dems say they plan to spend their time in D.C. to push President Joe Biden and Democrats in the U.S. Senate to move more aggressively to pass nationwide voting rights legislation that’s been held up for weeks due to opposition from Republicans and moderate Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Krysten Sinema of Arizona.

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“Our intent is to stay out and kill this bill this session,” Turner said, “and use the intervening time — I think 24 or 25 days now — before the end of the session to implore the folks in this building behind us to pass federal voting rights legislation to protect voters in Texas and across the country."

The House Democrats moved quickly to flee the state after Republican leaders in the state House and Senate moved quickly over the weekend in the early days of the recently begun special legislative session to force through their versions of “election integrity” bills, which increase penalties for voter fraud, add new hurdles for those wanting to vote by mail and outlaw Harris County innovations like drive-thru voting and 24-hour voting heavily used by minority voters.

Republicans swear those new rules are all in the name of making Texas elections fairer, but critics point out that Texas is just the latest conservative-led state to attempt to add voting restrictions after former President Donald Trump refused to concede defeat to Biden, and who has convinced a majority of Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen from him due to alleged voter fraud.

House Democrats similarly walked out to block what they viewed as civil rights-infringing voting restrictions at the end of the last legislative session in May, which prompted a furious Gov. Greg Abbott to immediately call for a special session of legislative overtime and to take the drastic step of vetoing all funding for the state’s legislative branch effective September 1.

Dallas state Rep. Rafael Anchía, leader of the House Mexican American Legislative Caucus, claimed Gov. Greg Abbott was to blame for the Democrats’ latest walkout effort.

“When you start the process in such a coercive way, when you say ‘I am going to be the absolute ruler of the state of Texas and defund the legislative branch,’ you have poisoned the entire process,” Anchía said. “We as Democrats, we were united. We said we are going to kill any undemocratic efforts in the state legislatures, and if that meant leaving the state, we were going to do it.”

“We are happy to work on bipartisan proposals that expand the right to vote, that make it easier to vote and harder to cheat in the state of Texas,” Anchia said, “but that is not what we saw even at the outset of this process." He swore that Texas Democrats wouldn’t allow the “Big Lie” that Trump didn’t really lose the 2020 election to allow Texas to join the ranks of other conservative states that restricted voting following Trump’s defeat.

Houston’s own state Rep. Senfronia Thompson put it even more bluntly. “The Republicans in this Legislature may have changed the Messiah from Jesus to Trump, but I haven’t,” she said.

“I’m gonna make sure that I do everything I can do so that my constituents’ rights will not be stripped from them because what [Republicans] believe in is a lie,” Thompson continued. “Trump lost the election, and they need to tell the people of this country the truth. And if they don’t, I’m going to.”

In a Monday night interview with Austin’s KVUE, Abbott urged House Speaker Dade Phelan to order that all the Democrats who fled the state be arrested by state law enforcement (which can’t happen until they’re back in Texas).

“In addition to that, however,” Abbott continued, “I can and I will continue to call a special session after special session after special session all the way up until the election next year.”

“As soon as they come back in the state of Texas, they will be arrested,” Abbott threatened. “They will be cabined inside the Texas Capitol until they get their job done.”

Dallas-area State Rep. Rhetta Bowers admitted she and her colleagues know “we are living on borrowed time in Texas, and [know that] we can’t stay here indefinitely to run out the clock to stop Republican anti-voter bills."

“That’s why we need Congress to act now,” she said.

When asked about what if any compromise from Republicans might convince the House Democrats to return to the Lone Star State to get back to work legislating, Turner said Abbott’s veto of legislative funding was the first hurdle to returning to the negotiating table in their view. Texas Democrats have asked the Texas Supreme Court to declare Abbott’s veto unconstitutional, and are still awaiting a decision on the matter from the state’s highest court.

“The first place to start would be for the governor to stand down on that, and then we can start talking,” Turner said.